06: The Why of Loss, Confusion, and Navigating the World Through Play and Connection
About Luke Carey
Lead Software Engineer @ Draftkings
Luke Carey is a Senior Lead Software Engineer at DraftKings, where he helps build innovative technology at the intersection of sports and gaming. With over a decade of experience in software development, Luke has held engineering leadership roles at WTW and worked with industry leaders like Apple and Goodyear.
Beyond his professional expertise, Luke brings a deeply personal story of resilience and growth. After losing his father at a young age, he turned to sports, video games, and the support of his community as anchors in his healing journey. These experiences not only shaped his path into technology but also highlight the adaptive ways our brains can navigate loss, connection, and creativity.
In this episode, Luke shares how play, resilience, and support systems guided him through grief and how those same qualities continue to fuel his career and life today.
Sydney: All right, everybody. Welcome back to episode six of the Why We Are Podcast. I am so excited to introduce you to our guest this week. We are gonna be spending some time with Luke Carey. He's a personal friend of mine, comes from an interesting background. He is the senior lead software engineer at DraftKings and has 10 years of professional experience in that realm as a software engineer, and has been a manager for seven of those years, believe it or not, and also has nine years of CrossFit background.
Sydney: [00:01:00] He is. Very well versed in that world. So welcome Luke, and thank you so much for joining us. I can't wait to dive in a little bit and get to know you better.
Luke: Yeah, thanks for having me guys.
Laurel: Luke, we've talked to you a little bit about what to expect and also Sydney set the stage of, we do a little bit of surprise.
Laurel: And I thought we could just dive in, although I'm curious about all these sport references and background, but I just wanna dive in and get us started with what is the piece, the thing for you that stressed you out, your nervous system, your brain out to the point where now when you look back, you know that your body and brain had to adapt to survive?
Luke: Yeah. It's an interesting question and it's probably not gonna be a. Typical answer. But the best thing I could think of for responding to this would be when my dad died when I was nine. I'm 32 now, so it was, do the math 23 years ago. Obviously it's a pretty big stress to have a parent die earlier in your life.
Luke: Yeah, [00:02:00] checks that, it, checks that box. And in terms of need to pivot, obviously having a parent die early in your life, your whole life pretty much pivots. Everything's different from there on out. So again, that box is checked too. It's a little bit, again, like I said, it's an interesting thing to talk through and an interesting answer because it's something that it was so long ago that it's difficult to recall a lot of specific, specific feelings.
Luke: My brain is different now, completely different than it was when I was nine. It's interesting to call back on that stress, but obviously there was stress,
Laurel: . Luke and I, in our world we often say like the loss of a parent, but even divorce can have that big T threat on baby mammals, right?
Laurel: Baby mammals were born really cute, but also really bad at surviving on our own. And so the relationship with a parent is essential, in our. Hardwiring in our biology to survive. Thank you for being open to sharing such a big stressor because it is, it impacts people on many levels and I think [00:03:00] there are others that will resonate with it to help paint the picture.
Laurel: Can you give us a little context about. How he died. And then who else was in your family of origin, like living in the house, so who were the other players that were around you to support and also feel that stress with you?
Luke: Yeah. I'll start with kind of the family dynamic, right?
Luke: So it was me, I'm the youngest. I have two brothers and a sister. I have a older brother who at that time was moved out in a different state, living in a different state. He had he was the older brother he, had left the house and gone out with his life. But my older brother, but my other older brother and my older sister were living at the house at the same time.
Luke: So it was the three of us, and then obviously my mom and my dad. And then as far as how he died it's an interesting kind of. Topic to talk about because it's not like some, like tragic event, like a car accident or something like that, or oh, cancer and then. Death eventually, it was more of a gradual decrease in, in health.
Luke: My dad didn't take care of himself. [00:04:00] He struggled with addiction multiple times in his life. Not severe addiction, but addiction enough to the point where he stopped taking care of your body. And that's, that eventually just ate away at him. And, that combined with not going to the doctor regularly or, knowing to seek out help when you need it, he didn't have a good support system for, needing to.
Luke: Take care of himself. So I think a lot of that kind of played a role too,
Sydney: yeah. And it's always interesting to me when I hear somebody recall something from childhood, because we tend to assign language that we have now to it as an adult, as a 3-year-old. But that's probably not the language you had at nine years old when you were seeing bits and pieces of this unfold.
Sydney: And so something you said earlier, Luke, that stood out to me is, it's hard to recall. And I'm curious, when you think back on being nine and losing your dad, what is it that does stand out to you?
Luke: That's, yeah, that's a good question. I remember, I definitely remember an overwhelming feeling of confusion.
Luke: I wasn't, I don't, I wouldn't wanna say sad. Of course I was sad, but [00:05:00] at that age, like you, you don't. Again, your brain's not fully developed at that point. Yeah. So your feelings are not exactly developed yet, so yeah, definitely confusion, obviously sadness, like everyone was, everyone around me was sad, right?
Luke: So I just I think, consumed that feeling too, and reflected it. But in my little nine-year-old brain, I didn't really know what was going on, so confusion I think was the big overarching theme. I didn't know that my life was gonna be different from there on out.
Luke: I didn't know what the future held,
Sydney: and that makes sense when we talk about brain development, right? Because the emotion center of your brain actually does develop faster than the parts that deal with cognitive development. But you don't have the language to navigate what you were feeling. So as an adult, we can sort through it and say, it might have been disappointment, it might have been grief, it might have been frustration and anger, but as a kid it just comes out as confusion.
Luke: Yeah, definitely. And again, at that age, like you're not thinking as clearly as you would be now. If I had lost a parent today, like I would have different things going through my head, [00:06:00] like logistical things, emotional things, like all sorts of what is the next.
Luke: Week hold month, old year hold what do I have to do to prepare for this? What are the things I have to be responsible for? As a kid? You're like I don't know. What's for dinner tonight? What am I going to school tomorrow? I don't know. Like you, your feelings are a lot more innocent at that point, not logistical.
Luke: But yeah, again, difficult to remember the exact specific feelings, but confusion's, the big one.
Laurel: I also just. I think it's helpful to note now. You felt sad because other people were feeling sad like that. We see that so often with kids is that they feel the emotions of the people close to them that surround them, but they again, they're like, yeah, I think that's how I feel.
Laurel: And I just love your distinction as you look back now, like that was there, but that more felt like. The environment was sad. And for you personally, it was confusion. I don't know. I just hope adults listen [00:07:00] to that because it is we often tell kids how they should feel and really they're stuck in the what is happening and also still what are we having for dinner, which is so real, right?
Laurel: Like we still need to eat, we still need to go to school and see our friends or. I want to go to soccer today. Are you sure? Yes, kids are sure and if they don't wanna go, that can be normal too. But kids process through doing and feeling and interacting and continuing to move through their life.
Laurel: Versus when we see adults a lot of times just shut down. Spoiler, it might be why kids. Do a little bit better processing grief than adults. But yeah, so that's, and
Luke: relatively speaking, I did much better than the rest of my family throughout this process because my brother at the time was 16 and my sister was 21.
Luke: I may have those ages, not quite right, but close to that, so they were, they had more of a relationship with my dad. They had more complex feelings to, [00:08:00] to process. Obviously my older brother too, he was in his twenties at that point. He had kids, my mom they all had much more complex feelings and any grief to process than I did.
Luke: I remember I my, my mom, brought me to like children's counseling for all this. I don't remember being for very long, but they tried to gimme some sort of like professional help and I remember being there just. Confused, again, confused as to why I'm there. I don't feel like it's helping.
Luke: I don't really wanna be here, this is weird. I don't know these people. I don't really wanna talk about this. Didn't feel like it was helping as an adult if that had happened, yeah, counseling would probably be good for me, but as a kid didn't really want it,
Sydney: yeah.
Sydney: And I always geek out when I talk about mirror neurons in the brain, and that's really what's coming up for me is, as children, we have this innate ability to see the world through the eyes of the people we're closest with, and we start to mirror what they're feeling. And I know your family system, it sounds like you're significantly younger than your siblings.
Sydney: And so sometimes with that we start to mirror the patterns that behavior they're seeing, or [00:09:00] even pick up on what they're feeling as we navigate situations. And I hear you pendulating from past to present and in the present when you get reminded of this experience of when your dad passed.
Sydney: I'm curious, Luke, what stands out to you now?
Luke: I would say the biggest thing I, I think of is surprised that. As a family unit, we were able to get through that and I was able to, it sounds weird or maybe morbid, but that I was able to turn out relatively normal. I think I'm normal, at least, I dunno, Sydney, maybe you can say differently, but I think I'm normal.
Luke: And for a kid who, lost his parent at nine, had a unstable household I moved to a different state, or I'm sorry, a different city shortly after this. So this is when I moved to Binghamton. It's a lot of unstable environment for a 9-year-old kid, and generally that's a recipe for a kid going through things and not throwing up normal and maybe having some issues that, they don't get a chance to work through. And I never really had any of that. And I think that's the biggest thing I look back on is [00:10:00] surprised that I was able to stay on the right track and, have a, have healthy relationships, have a successful career, things like that.
Sydney: So hearing you say that, like that's a lot of change all at once, to lose a parent, to adjust, to move across the state how did you learn and adapt in that environment?
Luke: Yeah, again, like it being so long ago it's hard to recall those exact feelings. But I was a pretty late back kid.
Luke: I didn't have a lot of beads like. Give my video games, and that's pretty much all I need, some friends video games, and I'm good. And I had that, and yeah, I do remember moving, being challenging. Especially I, it was when I moved, it was me and my mom only she had met someone in Binghamton.
Luke: We moved to Binghamton Binghamton, New York. That is. Away from Buffalo, New York, where we originally were from. It's about a four hour drive from Buffalo to Binghamton. So it was a decent distance away from my family, and I remember that being traumatic that, that sucked. I was close to my brother, I was close to my family and moving from them [00:11:00] and all my friends of course that I had in Buffalo.
Luke: That was definitely traumatic. I do recall being really sad about that. I would go and visit, during like summer vacation, I would go back to Buffalo, spend the summer there, and I always remember hated, I hated going back to Binghamton at the end of the summer. Summer's over, going back to school.
Luke: Like I wasn't a big fan of school, like I wasn't a great student. So it's like this combination of going back to school and leaving, leaving Buffalo, going back to Binghamton. Like those were feelings I remember very clearly. I did not like until, I don't know, maybe high school really was one that stopped being a thing.
Luke: Yeah that's the feeling I recall on the most.
Laurel: When you look back now at that, are there any people or activities or things now where you're saying like, thank goodness that person existed, or, I found blank because that really helped me move through that. Trauma of moving. And I also just wanna call out like, I don't think you're using that word inappropriately.
Laurel: Like we kids orient to [00:12:00] safety adults too through places, through familiarity. And so moving is you're resetting everything, friends, relationships, a room. And so it really is. Shakes us. So in that, and respecting like how much your kid self did. Yeah. What are the people or places or things or ideas that now looking back, wow, I'm so glad I got that or found that thing.
Luke: Yeah. So my my, not my oldest brother, but my brother that's in closest age to me, he's seven years older than me. He he was definitely someone that helped me get through a lot of this pain. He's, he assumed the. The father figure role in my life when my dad died which was not fair for him to have to take on as a 16-year-old at the time, but he did.
Luke: And he did a great job with it. And I wouldn't be who I am today without his impact on me. So by far, like he was someone who I was able to lean on and help have some sense of normalcy, so that was my, my whole childhood, there's like this.
Luke: The split of like my home [00:13:00] impact, my, my buffalo like home impact and then my Binghamton impact, right? So there was like these almost kinda two separate lives I was living as a kid. Yeah. This life over here and this life over here. So my brother was, my life in Buffalo, my life over here.
Luke: And then, in Binghamton it was my friends for sure. I was very lucky to. Have a good group of friends when I moved, which is not simple, right? You move to a new school you're the weird Duke kid, like it's, it can be difficult to make friends, but I was lucky to be able to find a group of friends that I have a lot in common with.
Luke: And, we've, we're still friends today, without them, I don't know what my life looks like today,
Laurel: yeah. And you don't need to yeah.
Sydney: And something. I hear Laurel say all the time is that we heal through connection and it's just so true because it doesn't matter if we're nine 19 or 92.
Sydney: We really do heal through connection because other people are able to hold our mind and mind even if they don't know they're doing it.
Laurel: Yeah. Or I always think about to like your people, you're not weird, right? [00:14:00] Or like you're there weird and I don't know, I just hope. Hope for everyone. That they find that the people that are like, oh yeah, like the fact that you know so much about this one little carve out is cool to them versus in another setting, they're like, Laurel, why do you know so much about, I don't know.
Laurel: I can't think of my thing that I had as a kid, but, whatever it is. Soccer. Yeah, I don't know. That feels not weird to me. Syd, maybe you just made my point for me.
Luke: Yeah, for us it was, it was always video games. And I brought it up before, but video games were always like my safe space.
Luke: I played video games with my dad when I was young, and I think that's where that sense of comfort and safety came from, so taking that and then finding a group of friends that, hey. We also like playing video games. It's like this cross section of comfort, like friends and the activity I like to do together.
Luke: It's like perfect, and that's still an activity we share to this day, 20 some odd years later.
Laurel: I was gonna ask, I, and I love that, that this is a way that, particularly men, women obviously connect [00:15:00] similarly through video games, but I think of it is. A way that men have, I have seen stay close and continue to nurture their friendships, which is awesome.
Laurel: We, it's hard to some, like my husband is a big soccer player, but it's like certain times of year it's much harder to like, facilitate those connections. And so to have a, an activity that mostly isn't impacted by weather, I think is nice.
Luke: Yeah. It gets understated I think a little bit.
Luke: Especially like kids in middle school, high school, right? Kids who don't have the means to, to get around or transport themselves, right? I wanna see my friends. You can't see your friends because your friends live 15 minutes away and I'm not driving you to your friend's house today.
Luke: To be able to, jump on a video game together and talk over like a headset. Is you basically have unlimited contact with your friends, which just helps that, again, as a child who has all the time in the world you don't have responsibilities, you don't have a job.
Luke: You can just sit there and let that relationship cultivate build pretty much endlessly. So you're, you end up with this relationship that has had so much [00:16:00] time to, to grow, all because you guys share a medium of entertainment that can be shared over the internet,
Sydney: and so I would be curious if you, and this might challenge your brain a little bit, Luke, what games did you play?
Luke: Oh, man. All sorts. I would say growing up the main ones were sports games. So we played like a hockey game together, HL or whatever the latest and greatest first person shooter at the time was.
Luke: So there's halo or Call of Duty, whatever those may have been at the time, fairly similar games, but we rotate between those two. And each of those games would have their own separate friend groups. There was the people at school who played the Call of Duty games and there were people at school that played the NHL games.
Luke: But I remember very specifically this is not related to what you asked, said, but while it's in my brain to think about, I remember, I, I recall in high school and in middle school this concept of these video games and playing together, it. Brought so many of the, at least the guys in school together, and no one [00:17:00] really had a problem with anyone.
Luke: You think of classic like high school scenarios with people picking at each other, and kids can be kids and it there's this friend group here and this clique here and this clique here. I don't recall that being a thing in our high school. Everyone got along with them.
Luke: I, we've, not everyone, but you know what I mean, most people got along with most people because we had this shared medium of entertainment where we'd all jump on and, flexbox each other, as a way for people to get to know each other better, like outside of the school environment.
Luke: Which I think, again, it had a, significant impact in, on my development growing up. And it's part of the reason why I chose the career field that I chose,
Sydney: and so those of you. This is audio, so you can't see this, but Luke has this framed Josh Allen jersey behind him. And so I asked this because I was curious how much of the gaming had to do with team and sport?
Luke: A good amount. I, so there's obviously the NHL game, right? So that's hockey. And then there's also Madden, which is NFL. And I was [00:18:00] still am obviously a huge sports fan. The Buffalo Saber and Buffalo Bills specifically being from Buffalo. So that was another major impact on me too.
Luke: Going back to the dad piece I have memories of being a kid watching Saber and Bills games with my dad. And that's something I, obviously, memories that I don't have very many of, but I, the ones I do remember, I do. Very tiered.
Sydney: Yeah. Laurel, I'm curious what's coming up for
Laurel: you? I think I.
Laurel: I love hearing narratives that counteract sometimes like pop psychology stuff, although we can get into the current evidence about playing video games is actually not negative. But I still think there's that narrative of, kids aren't safe online. And so I'm curious, Luke, having had.
Laurel: This impactful positive experience with video games. Have you thought about how you'll introduce them to your kids if you have them? Or maybe some advice on like a parent [00:19:00] like me who didn't grow up playing a ton of like how to have conversations, how to introduce them as something that can be really something that facilitates connection and expression and problem solving.
Laurel: I see like. How much information people hold in their brains about how to like, oh wait, they're lining up this way and so we're gonna switch and run this play. Like this is real problem solving ability. So I'm just curious, like as an advocate yeah, how you're thinking about if you were gonna introduce them or any sort of advice to a parent that maybe doesn't have as much experience with them as you do.
Luke: That's a good question. And it's, I think, a complicated answer, right? I, I remember like when I was growing up and like conversations with my mom today, about me playing video games when I was a kid, and she always told me she always would say, she's I would hear you in your room, like talking to your friends.
Luke: And she was always like you're just really hanging out with your friends. Like she saw it more as. Bonding time [00:20:00] with friends rather than, oh, he's just in his room playing video games. Like he's in his room playing video games, but also socializing and also building social skills. So she chose to look at it positively.
Luke: I don't ever really remember my mom saying no, you can't play video games anymore, or You've been playing too much, which. May or may not have been a good thing. Yeah, there's, everything in moderation, right? I probably shouldn't have played as many video games as I did growing up, and maybe I should have focused on my studies a little bit more.
Luke: I don't know. Gotten some more exercise, whatever. But it worked out again, for me. It worked out. Should it work out or should it have worked out? Maybe not. But that same formula work on someone else? Probably not. I think it's very specific to like. My, the things I did and how I played the video games and how I interact with others is I think, very specific to me.
Luke: I would not recommend that, another, like whether it's my kid or someone else's kid, do what I did because it could have very easily gone the other way where that kid just completely abandoned their studies or got too involved in the video games or went down other channels that would not have been healthy for them.
Luke: Like I [00:21:00] just happened to harness that energy in a positive way and not have it impact me negatively. But I also very much see the other side where too much video games or too many video games or whatever could definitely be negative, in terms of attention span or all the other negative side effects that come with too much of anything.
Luke: Not even just video games, too much tv, too much screen time, whatever it may be, right? So my, I guess my answer, Laurel, is I don't really know what I would say to someone because I don't have kids. I'm actually not planning on having kids. And I think every brain, as you guys know, every brain's different.
Luke: Every brain's gonna handle this input and process it differently.
Laurel: Yeah. I heard you say something that I think is really important, and that is your mom was listening and paying attention and checking in with you. And just generally when it comes to any content that has the potential for misuse.
Laurel: Pay attention and talk to your kid. And it sounds like your mom was doing that. The other thing though, I wanna call out is [00:22:00] that you said maybe I should have spent more time outside. And so I'm curious now, because you are someone that has a very like technology based job and you said you still like to connect.
Laurel: How do you get out of your head? How do you get out of the video game space now and what have you found through adding in something else?
Luke: Yeah. And I think that's where the, Sid mentioned that I've been doing CrossFit for coming up on 10 years now. I think that's where that comes into play, right?
Luke: Obviously sports are a big part of my life too. So the combination of playing sports or just doing CrossFit or going to the gym that was like my my, my Jekyll and Hyde, right? Like inside is the video games. And then the other part of it was getting out and being active.
Luke: Right? That's a huge part of my life. It started late in high school. I wasn't always, in, in good shape when I was younger. When I was a, when I was a kid, like really through the middle school years into middle of high school, I was,
Luke: I wasn't very active. I was a little overweight.
Luke: My activity was gym class in school and that was pretty much it. And then, senior Juniorish, senior year of high school came around and, my [00:23:00] friends who I also play video games with, shocker introduced me to the gym and I'm like, oh, I think I actually kinda like this. It gets the.
Luke: The blood kind of flowing in a different way. It clears out your mind a little bit. And I really clung to that feeling of being active and being in the gym. And that has just stuck with me since it's my other way of getting those endorphins out,
Sydney: yeah. Almost like the balance of getting lost in work and video games in one hand and then getting lost in endorphins and physical activity in the other.
Luke: They're totally different, right? They're, they couldn't be any more polar opposite in terms of what you are doing, right? Like one requires you to be sitting and using your hands and looking at a screen, and the other involves you to be outta the house being active, standing, lifting, running, whatever, so it's a very good separation, right? When I'm tired of one thing, I can almost certainly do the other thing. When I'm tired of that other thing, I can certainly go back to the other thing. So it's a good kind of pendulum,
Sydney: but both. My understanding is both, you have to be completely in and paying attention and attuned to [00:24:00] just what you're doing, either on a somatic level with CrossFit or on a cognitive level with work.
Luke: Definitely.
Laurel: Huh. This just came to be so feel free to be like, I don't know. But I'm curious if adding in that. Really body based I'm gonna, I'm gonna hang clean, like significant weight over my head. If that process and developing that ability, if you've noticed now that it's helped you in any way as a someone who works in programming technology space or video game is there anything now looking back over the past 10 years where you're like, wow, this helped that, or vice versa, really?
Luke: That is an interesting question. I think both the, both these fields and, this is probably most fields or most things that you do that are worth doing, at least come with challenge and come with failure. I've attempted Max lifts before and I've failed them, but. I don't get discouraged, i've tried to do things at work. I've tried projects where they don't [00:25:00] pan out the way I want them to the first time, right? It's a common, feeling to have that failure on both sides, whether it's in the gym or even playing a sport, right? You fail to make a throw or catch a pass or, whatever.
Luke: Same with work. A project doesn't turn out the way you want and that's life, right? That happens with everything. And I think. Whether it's the gym or whether it's wearing software you're not always gonna get it on your first try. And that kind of like reminder that's just the way life is and to keep coming back and to not be discouraged.
Luke: I think that's very relevant in all aspects of my life, including those two software and in the gym. Yeah. And it's a constant reminder to just not, not give up and try to, if you fail, reassess, try again and try to learn from those failures.
Laurel: I think that's a great reminder. I, the, it so often gets talked about in sport and at the gym. And this has come up in some other conversation I've had recently of, how do we increase our tolerance for discomfort around [00:26:00] messing up, failing, whatever you wanna call it.
Laurel: And yeah, I think people don't. Often maybe realize like that's what they're doing. If it's at work, if it's you lose to your friend like five times in a row in whatever, I'm gonna really date my what video game you're playing. I'm like, the only video game that lives at my house is fifa.
Laurel: Again, sorry that works. No, that works. Like all soccer family. Yeah. That's great. Any is there any time where you've had a hard time shaking that failure? And then if so, what'd you do to get out of it?
Luke: That's a good question too. I think, so there's using the gym and professional kind of like dichotomy here.
Luke: In both sides. I think I've had that feeling right? So like in the gym it'd be, Hey, I haven't prd this lift in three years and I keep trying and I just can't, whether it's, I'm feeling bad that day or the weight feels too heavy, or my technique's not correct. And, that, that [00:27:00] seems to be, again, a reality of that activity or doing that.
Luke: And as far as shaking it, there's really nothing you can do. You just you move on. That's, that is the only way to shake it. At least in the gym. And then as far as professionally I definitely have had that more so in my management experience in my career early on.
Luke: It's, there's no blueprint for how to be a good manager and as a software engineer you get promoted to being a manager in your professional space, usually by being good at your job. But being good at your job does not mean you were a good people manager, right? Or good at managing people.
Luke: So I do remember very early on in my career, like when I was, when I first became a manager, like not handling not handling someone's development properly or giving them the right kind of like springboard to succeed. Whether that be, putting a junior engineer into a stretch assignment too early in their career and watching them kind of flounder when, I set them up for that.
Luke: Learning from that. So yeah, that was again, early on in my [00:28:00] professional career and I've seen those experiences and again, like recognized that they probably weren't the best. And again, you like I said before, you assess what went wrong and move on from there. So it's really more so around like accepting failure.
Luke: Knowing failure is coming, but making sure that you work,
Sydney: hearing you answer that question, I am not surprised in the slightest that it came out of. It is what it is because hearing you talk just even today of how you've adapted is that you just have your nervous system knows how to get through things and that almost what I'm hearing is it doesn't limit you from trying.
Sydney: I'm not sure, I know a lot of other 32 year olds who have gotten where you are because they're too afraid to try and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I am picking up on sometimes you know what you want and you go and get it. Without that fear of failure looming over you.
Luke: Yeah. If you are afraid of failing, you're not gonna get very far in your life, right?
Luke: It's, for, strength is, it's such a cliche, [00:29:00] right? But strength has grown from failure, right? If you're not failing, that means you're probably not pushing yourself to your limits or enough to grow, right? So yeah, I, I fail all the time. I love it. I like failure. Failure means I'm pushing myself to the point where I need to be.
Luke: As long as you're not feeling too much, right? If you're feeling too much, you probably need to dial things back or reevaluate a little bit. But yeah, a good amount of failure is healthy, right?
Laurel: And I think, one of the things that I see when, anytime there's fear involved in how we're describing something.
Laurel: It often comes with the hyper focus, right? So it's like we're just looking at or worrying about this one thing, and then that means oftentimes our brains, because they're only focused on when they miss opportunity, miss other threats, miss other things that are urgent and important, and, that is what I actually see caused the problem.
Laurel: It's not necessarily that, okay, yeah, it would not be great if this thing happened. That's true. But what's also true is I've [00:30:00] done, we've had six months of hitting all of our deadlines and like advancing this thing and then this was our like project where it's like we knew it was a stretch and if it works out amazing, but if it doesn't.
Laurel: We've been doing the other things and so you know what I hear that you have done and so the, somewhat like coaching, I would give everyone else of what is Luke actually saying? Saying he has the ability to zoom out and see. Things in perspective, which oftentimes really just means he's seeing multiple things at once.
Laurel: And a brain that is able to compare and shift perspectives and see this is what's maybe true in the moment, but what this could mean for the future. And comparing it to our past body of work. That's a brain that's working on. Multiple levels. And those are, in our experience, Cindy and I, those are healthy brains.
Laurel: Anyway, that's what I think is exciting and that you developed really pretty early and your mom created a space for you to be doing multiple things [00:31:00] at once and okay, so your grades maybe dropped here a little. Can you fix them? And you probably did, or at least enough to then.
Laurel: Maybe not. Okay.
Luke: No. Did not fix them. I didn't fix them until college. I did not take school seriously at all in high school until I got to college. And that was when that was when I realized that just trying to skip by was not gonna work. The classes got a lot harder, software engineering or computer science, which is what I got my degree in.
Luke: It's not easy. And that became very apparent when I started taking like higher level math classes. Like calculus. Like I didn't take pre-calc at all. So I got, I remember my first calculus class in college. My first exam, I just completely bombed. And I'm like, okay. Like, all right, this is real.
Luke: This is not high school anymore. And that turned into again, like assessing what went wrong and shifting to, to try to figure out how to, how to fix it, right? And that turned into do what you have to do to get to figure this out. This is where you're at. This is what you know you wanna do.
Luke: You have to get through this to get to where you wanna be. Like, you have to figure it out. So do what you have to do to figure out. And that turned into, Hey, I just do. [00:32:00] For my brain specifically, like I, I am a software engineer, right? I do think logically, but like math never came natural to me. Like I had to work in math like that.
Luke: Some people can just pick it up and understand it and memorize formulas and equations, whatever. That was not me. I remember in college I had to do every single homework that we got four or five times over, like just repetition. For me, repetition's key. If I do things, if I do something one time, I may not totally grasp it.
Luke: But if you gimme time to just repeat and study and go over and over I'll get it right. And that was what I needed to do for college. I did not do that in high school at all. High school was just like, yeah, study a little bit. Take an exam. Yeah. I got like an 80 and outta a hundred. Okay, that's fine.
Luke: Move on. I was not a perfection set of all in high school, but I had to shift in college.
Laurel: Yeah. I always smile when I talk to people. They're like, oh, I didn't do well in school at all. And then in college I'm like you did well enough to go to college. Sure. And, but I love the, like you got knocked down and then you're like, all right, let's go.
Laurel: Like I. That way of training didn't work. Let's go, let's try [00:33:00] something else. And I this has come up a few times for me, but I think like you have a loving and nice relationship with gamification, right? Anything where there's this you can gamify it it works for you. And I resonate with that too of I liked school, particularly in courses where it's like, all right, you didn't do well on this test, but here's the chance and here's how you study.
Laurel: If you, that there was this similar to a soccer field or a video, I'm like, all right, I can master this. I can figure it out and I can win. That always worked for me. So I like that you pulled that out okay, I gotta. I'm not getting knocked down or knocked out. I'm, I got knocked down, let's go.
Laurel: And these are all the little things of when we look at our stories and how we got to where we are, like, how we succeeded. These are the bits where it's like your brain was created by you doing all of those things, navigating all those things and all these examples of where it then showed up to help you get to the next piece, next level, figure it out.
Laurel: I would bet [00:34:00] with managing, you probably didn't just oh, this is hard. You probably sought out resources to get better. For sure. Yeah.
Luke: Yeah. Especially with, being a manager like when you're in school, like you go to school like, as if you're a software engineer, you either went to, get a computer science degree or a software engineering degree, or, these days there's AI specific degrees, but whatever you got a degree to do that job.
Luke: I was trained on how to write. Great. There is no training for managing people. I've said this before in my career to other people, in, in the world of software engineering, like the technology is the easy part. It's the people that are hard, the people are the hard part of software engineering.
Luke: Because you're dealing with people who are generally very high performing or very intelligent, but may lack certain social skills or charisma or social cues, right? So you have to figure out a way to, to navigate that as a manager. And on that same note, there aren't a lot of engineers that kind of have both sides of those brains, right?
Luke: Like the logical part enough to be. Good enough at [00:35:00] their job to get promoted to be a manager while also being good at matching people. And I think that's true for many fields, not just software engineering, right? If you're good enough at your job to get promoted, you may not have the social skills to be a good manager.
Luke: And I think that's, again, common in a bunch of different fields. I was lucky enough to have good mentorship in my at my last job. My, my old boss was a great mentor for this type of stuff. He was someone who. Showed me that the ropes on how to be a manager, taught me what to focus on.
Luke: And again, without him, I would not be where I'm at today. There's so many people in my life that have put me in the position to be where I'm at today, and he's definitely one of them two.
Sydney: And I always come back to my like word that I hold in my heart is innate wisdom. And I can hear just the innate wisdom in everything you did.
Sydney: Back when you were nine years old and your dad died and you had to adjust, you tapped into that innate wisdom and it's followed you throughout your entire career. You talk about these fond memories, this what I call adaptive neurology. [00:36:00] These things that are encoded in these neural networks in our brain with this love, this positivity, this like kind of feeling.
Sydney: And whether you knew you were doing it or not, at nine years old, you were doing it, you were playing, you were surviving, you were coping, and it's trickled through to a point where now you're this adult pretty high up in a pretty big. Domain in your field. And there's still that play, there's still that innate wisdom that comes up.
Sydney: I know you guys probably don't know this, but I've had the both luxury and privilege and demise of watching a Bills game with Larry Luke. And you can see it, it comes out the innate wisdom and the love and the passion, and it's pretty cool to see.
Luke: It's all about dumping your energy into positive things.
Luke: And for me, that again, has always been sports and video games. Those are my two positive energy outlets, and I think it's gone a long way for me, right? Like I was lucky enough at the end of high school [00:37:00] going into college to know that I wanted to get into software engineering as a career.
Luke: And a lot of that was from my love for video games. I didn't necessarily wanna, write or create video games for a living. I didn't wanna, even at that age, I knew I didn't wanna mix work and play that much. Which is very ironic because I now work at Draftings, which is a, company that's predominantly around sports.
Luke: And I love sports. And I work on fantasy games, which is hilarious that it's come full circle. But again, it's all about finding positive ways to get that energy out, and I've been lucky to have those things be so clear to me, right? Not everyone has the ability to have those things be so clear to 'em, right?
Luke: Some people struggle to find what they wanna do with their career or what their positive energy output can go into. Luckily, again, that has never been difficult for me, and I think that's shaped my brain in a lot of different ways. Like I am typically not someone who has a lot of anxiety because I can I like, Laurel said before, I have the unique skill to be able to zoom out and see the bigger picture.
Luke: And I think that helps with a lot of that anxiety. I know [00:38:00] what needs to be, front and center and what can be front of the back burner. I've always been good at identifying that. And that's gone a long way for me,
Sydney: and I know we only have a couple minutes left today, and I wanted to wrap up by asking you, Luke, hearing your story and sorting through it over the last hour.
Sydney: Is there anything you're taking away or even like a hope for our listeners that you would really want to resonate with them?
Luke: Good question. I would say specifically to. The, if there are people out there who have come from broken households or have lost loved ones early in their life, or if they were just dealt a bad hand in life, we're all dealt a certain hand and you have to play with the hand you're given.
Luke: Don't be discouraged and think that there's a ceiling on your potential because of the hand you were dealt. Like you're delta hand, but you can play. That went, you can play that hand well, right? So to focus on that and focus on finding the things that you can put that positive energy into.
Luke: I found my thing luckily early in life and I was able to [00:39:00] let that guide me through my life, guide me through my career. So find what that is. And again, you're dealt behind your dealt. Don't mope on it. Don't feel sorry for yourself. Just do what you can to move forward, whatever that is.
Laurel: I love that answer. I think, also what's coming up for me is to honor that, that you're a little kid. I'm curious what in your life it could be like your gaming set up, like your, like what would your little, like nine, 10-year-old self be most excited or like mind blown about your life? Now
Luke: I, it's funny that you say that.
Luke: I'm sitting in my work office right now and I have. Three monitors in front of me and then, and the laptop's great. So four screens total, and I just imagine my 9-year-old self walking through those doors back there and seeing this setup. They'd be, I'd be so geeked out by it, like all these monitors and this cool laptop, this really fast laptop.
Luke: I'd be wanting to tinker around with all this and try to install stuff and tinker around with the computer and look at the monitors. Technology not just [00:40:00] software, not just game, just technology in general has always been a big thing for me. I've been taking tinkering with technology for as long as I can remember.
Luke: Again, not just video games computers too. I've built computers, I put computers together. And this setup I have just right in front of me, which I'm so lucky to have, it's a very high end setup. My kid, kid self would be totally geeking out over it.
Laurel: Okay. So full transparency, would you let him tinker?
Luke: Definitely not, absolutely not a chance. I know what I was up to back then, and I would not let 9-year-old self hear any of this, especially my work laptop. That would not end well for anyone.
Laurel: Love it. Thanks for being honest about your nine-year-old self and how much you love your current setup, right?
Laurel: Yeah, I'm, it is cool. Don't touch it. Yeah,
Sydney: and I love that takeaway too, that. Life has adversity. There's very few things in this world that we can guarantee, but we can guarantee that, and that there doesn't have to be a ceiling because of that. So I appreciate you sharing that, 'cause I'm gonna take that with me.
Luke: Of course. I think it's [00:41:00] also just like giving yourself a break, right? Life's hard. You're gonna fail, like shit
Laurel: happens. Don't be,
Luke: yeah. Don't be so hard on yourself,
Laurel: yeah. I think it's like. There's ways to figure you will figure something out. I think I'm a big believer of just keep doing something.
Luke: Yeah. And I think a lot of it is managing stress too. Is this thing worth stressing out over, like that's been a big thing as I've gotten into being more of an adult , around is this a good place for me to have stress? Right? Like, Everyone has stress, all sorts of, you know, physical stress, mental stress, whatever.
Luke: Knowing like what is worth the stress. And if it's not worth the stress, just drop it off, shed it, it's not worth it.
Laurel: Yeah. And I, and that viewpoint is void of beating yourself up for the time you did spend thinking about it. Because that also doesn't help us.
Luke: Exactly. Exactly.
Laurel: Luke, it was fun spending time with you.
Laurel: Thanks for sharing. In so many directions with us and entertaining our questions that we didn't send you in advance. We appreciate the surprise factor and yeah, [00:42:00] I am sure many people's little kid self would resonate with what you shared. And also not really wanna have a gaming system and computer setup like you.
Laurel: We are grateful for your time and. Thanks for sharing with us today.
Luke: Yeah, thanks for talking to me. It was cool to, to go through some of these thoughts and emotions that I haven't really thought about in a while, so I appreciate it.
That's it for today's episode of the Why. We Are However you're wired, however you're growing, you belong here. If this episode resonates with you, we hope you consider sharing it with someone whose brain you admire. Remember to celebrate your unique brain. Stay curious and we'll meet you back here soon.
