A Little More About Pacific44 — And Why You Might Not Completely Get It Yet

Originally published September 19, 2026, before the website launch. References to the upcoming website reflect that stage of Pacific44’s story.

Over the past few months, something interesting has started happening.

People have been asking Angie and me a pretty simple question:

“What exactly is Pacific44?”

Is it a travel page? Is it about getting older? Retirement? Health? Restaurants? Music? Relationships? Is it a magazine? A lifestyle brand? And now Angie has ViolaGirl29, so where does that fit into everything?

The answer is…

Yes. 😂 And here’s something I haven’t said before.

Some of that confusion was intentional.

When Angie and I started Pacific44, I didn’t want to build another social media page that could be explained in three words. I didn’t want to create a retirement page where every conversation eventually ended with a 401(k). I didn’t want a travel page that was simply pictures of beautiful hotels and beaches. And I definitely didn’t want to create something telling people what their lives after 55 were supposed to look like.

I wanted to create something that might make people curious enough to start thinking about their own lives.

Because that’s what is happening to us.

We were starting to ask some different questions.

Not When can we retire?

Not How much money will we need? Not even Where should we live?

Those things matter, of course. But the question that kept coming back was much simpler:

What do we want the rest of this journey to feel like?

That question is really where Pacific44 begins.

Why 44?

The name itself started with something pretty personal.

44 was my football number growing up in Waterloo, Iowa. 🏈 I couldn’t have possibly known back then where life was going to take me. Eventually, it took me west to California and the Pacific. Somehow, all these years later, those two completely different parts of my life came together.

Pacific / 44.

Pacific44.

But I’ve never wanted the brand to become a story about a football number. And I certainly don’t want Pacific44 to be a story just about Angie and me.

The name started with us.

The idea is much bigger.

We’re both 56 now. Our kids are grown. We’ve spent decades building careers, raising families, paying bills, taking care of people, navigating good years and difficult ones, moving around the country and doing all the things you’re supposed to do when you’re busy building a life. And along the way, something changes…

You realize that there may be more journey behind you than there is ahead of you.

That doesn’t have to be depressing.

For me, it’s been strangely motivating. Especially after Angie’s health scare earlier this year.

The question at this age shouldn’t only be, How long do I have?

A better question is:

What am I going to do with it?

That’s Why the Stories Are Intentionally All Over the Place

If you’ve followed Pacific44 for a while, you’ve noticed that one week I might be writing about a racetrack in Kentucky and the next we’re talking about Newport Beach, retirement, a restaurant, an old song or something Angie remembers from growing up in Waterloo.

That’s not because we haven’t figured out what Pacific44 is.

That’s because real life isn’t divided into categories.

My Road to Keeneland story started with a horse named Cigar and somehow turned into memories of working for United Tote, arriving at Keeneland in 1994, Kentucky horse country and showcasing people I worked beside more than 30 years ago.

The computers and wagering terminals aren’t really what stayed with me.

The people did. Angie’s One More Lap Saturday Soul story started with Skateland in Waterloo. Brown rental skates with those orange wheels. Music. Friends. Being dropped off by her parents and having a few hours where the world felt enormous and she felt completely free.

But the story wasn’t really about roller skating either.

It was about the woman that little girl eventually became and everything she learned to carry along the way.

Work. Children. Marriage. Appointments. Schedules. Family. Groceries. Holidays. Responsibilities. The endless list of things women become incredibly good at remembering because somebody has to remember them.

Angie doesn’t want to go backward and become that little girl again.

She likes the woman that girl became.

She just wants to give that woman some of the girl’s freedom back.

I love that.

And I think I’m trying to do some of the same thing.

Even the Music Has a Purpose

Some of you may have noticed that we attach music to almost everything we post.

That’s intentional too.

I don’t think music gets enough credit for the role it plays in our memories.

A song can take you somewhere faster than almost anything else. You can hear the first few seconds of something you haven’t heard in 25 years and suddenly remember the car you drove, the people you were with, where you worked, who you were dating or what your life felt like at that exact moment.

That’s incredible when you think about it.

So when I choose music for a Pacific44 story, I’m not simply scrolling through songs looking for something that sounds good behind a picture.

The music is another layer of the story.

For this story, I chose “Dig” by Incubus. There’s a line in the song about uncovering “the better part of me.”

I heard that differently at 56 than I probably would have heard it when the song first came out.

Because by this age, there are a lot of layers.

Careers. Kids. Mortgages. Responsibilities. Successes. Failures. Expectations. Stress. Things we’re proud of. Things we’d probably do differently. Things we’ve carried because somebody needed us to carry them. That’s life.

But underneath all of it is still you.

And this stage isn’t about becoming an entirely different person.

It’s about uncovering some of the person who was there before life got so busy.

The curiosity.

The friendships.

The music.

The places you always wanted to see.

The things you loved doing before everything had to accomplish something.

The ability to sit somewhere beautiful for an afternoon without wondering what you should be doing instead.

The better parts of ourselves didn’t disappear. Life just piled a lot on top of them.

That thought has become increasingly important to me.

And it also helped me understand why writing Pacific44 has become so therapeutic.

Before Pacific44, There Was Ask AL

This part goes back a lot further than I realized.

Long before Pacific44, before my technology career and before most of the chapters that followed, I was on the newspaper staff at Central High School in Waterloo. I had a column called Ask AL.

A casual Dear Abby style column that was suggested by our teacher Pat McGeough. His confidence in my writing style made me smile and I am still appreciative of his belief in my skills til this day.

I can still remember people responding to things I wrote. Someone would stop me and mention the column or tell me they had read something I wrote.

There was something about that connection I loved.

You sit somewhere by yourself and write down what you’re thinking. Then you put it out into the world. And somehow another person reads it and thinks:

I know what he means.

Or: I’ve felt that too.

There’s something powerful about that.

Looking back now, I think I’ve always wanted to produce a publication of my own.

I just took a very long route getting here. 😂 Life happened.

Careers happened.

Family happened.

And writing became one of those things that quietly moved to the side.

I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I started doing it again.

Then Came Soul Concepts

Years later, Angie and I owned Soul Concepts Digital Marketing and Web Design in Laguna Beach.

That chapter taught me something else about myself.

I really enjoyed helping people take something that existed in their imagination and make it real.

I especially loved working with brick-and-mortar businesses that people put their blood, sweat and tears into.

Someone could walk me through their restaurant, store, office or business and explain what they were trying to create. They’d tell us how they wanted customers to feel when they walked through the door. They’d show me the details they were proud of and explain what made their business different. Then it became my job to take that physical experience and recreate it on a digital canvas. Like a painter… A digital Picasso…

The photography. The words. The website. The colors. The feeling.

I loved doing that for people.

I’ve been fortunate throughout my career to help a lot of people and companies bring their ideas to life in one form or another. Currently doing similar work as a Sr. Project Manager with Agilysys in the Casino Gaming Food and Beverage vertical. Go InfoGenesis!

And in the middle of building Pacific44, I realized something that should have occurred to me years ago. After spending so much time helping other people create their vision, it’s finally time I do the same thing for myself.

That realization has changed the way I look at Pacific44.

Because this doesn’t feel like some random project Angie and I started in our 50s.

It feels like I’m circling back. And it’s easy…

Back to that kid at Central High School writing Ask AL.

Back to the creativity Angie and I shared with Soul Concepts.

Back to storytelling.

Back to building something.

That’s why writing these stories feels so therapeutic.

I’m rediscovering something I didn’t realize I had put away.

The Tools Are Different Now

The funny thing is, I’m still doing essentially what I was doing all those years ago.

The tools have just changed.

The Knightly News high school newspaper from the greatest school Central High in Waterloo Iowa is becoming The Pacific44 Journal.

Instead of one printing press, we have Facebook, Substack, photography, video, music and soon our own Pacific44 website and Print Magazine. And instead of writing about whatever was happening around Central High School (Go Chargers), I’m writing about something I understand considerably better now than I did then.

Life and Balance on the Journey to 60 and Beyond…

Not because I’ve figured it out.

Quite the opposite.

I realize how much there still is to figure out.

And that’s what makes this interesting.

Where ViolaGirl29 Fits

That brings me to Angie 🎻💜 As Pacific44 has grown, it became obvious to me that Angie needed her own space within it.

That’s where ViolaGirl29 comes in.

Pacific44 is the larger house we’re building together. ViolaGirl29 is Angie’s lane within it—a place where she can talk about this stage of life from her own perspective as a woman, wife, mom, friend and career woman.

Her experience isn’t always mine.

Her perspective isn’t always mine.

It shouldn’t be. There are things women experience at this age that I can’t authentically write about for them. Angie can.

So rather than trying to make everything sound like one Pacific44 voice, I want her voice to become stronger.

Same Journey. Her Lane.

And I think that makes the larger Pacific44 brand and story better.

So What Are We Actually Building?

This is probably the part people have been trying to figure out. 😂 I don’t want Pacific44 to become another social media page constantly trying to sell somebody something.

I want it to become a positive ecosystem for people experiencing the same experiences Angie and I are — the Journey to 60 and Beyond.

I want travel to be able to sit beside retirement. Health beside a great restaurant. An Incubus song beside a story about Keeneland. A hidden gem beside a conversation about relationships. A memory from Waterloo beside a weekend on the California coast.

Because that’s what our lives actually look like.

Our lives aren’t categories.

They’re people, places, music, food, friendships, memories, careers, relationships, successes, disappointments, health, adventures and thousands of ordinary moments that somehow become our story.

That’s the world I want Pacific44 to reflect.

And I want it to be positive. Not fake-positive.

We’ve lived enough life to know difficult things happen. Families go through things. Careers don’t always work out the way we expect. People get sick. Relationships change. Parents get older. We lose people. We make mistakes.

Pacific44 isn’t about pretending those things don’t exist.

It’s about deciding that they don’t get all of our attention.

There are already plenty of places in the world willing to give us negativity 24 hours a day.

I’d like to build something different.

A place that reminds us there are still great people to meet, roads we haven’t driven, songs we haven’t heard in years, restaurants worth lingering in, places worth discovering, friendships worth protecting and mornings when having absolutely nowhere to be might be the best thing on the schedule.

Eventually, This Isn’t About Us

And this may be the most important part.

Eventually, I don’t want Pacific44 to make you think about our journey.

I want it to make you think about yours.

What’s your Skateland?

What’s your Keeneland?

What song can take you back 30 years in five seconds?

Where do you feel lighter? Who do you wish you spent more time with?

What trip have you been talking about taking for ten years?

What did you love doing before you became too busy to do it?

What have you spent decades carrying that doesn’t need to come with you anymore?

And most importantly:

What part of yourself would you like to uncover again?

Those are the conversations I want Pacific44 to start.

Angie and I aren’t building this because we have all the answers.

Far from it.

We’re building it because we think this is a pretty great age to start asking some better questions.

So if you’ve been following Pacific44 for a while and still haven’t completely figured out what Angie and I are doing…

Good that was strategically done. 👨🏾‍💻 Now you know why.

We’re still discovering some of it ourselves.

The Pacific44 Journal will continue to grow. Our own website and music station is coming. There will be more stories, more travel, more Hidden Gems, more Saturday Soul, more music, more conversations about health, relationships and retirement, and probably some ideas that haven’t even occurred to us yet. I’m okay with that.

Actually, I’m excited about it.

Because after all these years of helping other people take the things they imagined and put them onto a digital canvas, Angie and I are finally building our own.

And I hope there’s room on that canvas for a whole lot of you.

People in their 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond who aren’t interested in simply getting older, but are curious about what they can still discover, experience, change, revisit, let go of and enjoy.

Pacific44 Journal is a publication and also:

A Community Built With Purpose.

It’s a Gold Standard Lifestyle Brand. Clean and Intentional.

But underneath everything we’re building is one pretty simple idea:

There is still a lot of life ahead of us. Let’s be intentional about how we live it.

I hope this explains the vision a little better.

And where we’re heading.

Although if you still don’t completely get it yet, that’s okay too. We don’t understand fully ourselves.

We ask that you keep following and share the journey with others in your communities who you feel will benefit from This new platform we are building. Lastly, feel free to ask us about contributing if you love writing, music, photography, travel, history, have experience in finance and retirement planning, etc. If it is positive and fits, we welcome the discussions and your contributions. Oh and did I mention the podcast that will be coming lol 😂. The destination was never really the point.

The journey is. Happy Saturday Soul 💜 — Allen Pacific44 🏈 & Angie ViolaGirl29🎻 PACIFIC44 | THE PACIFIC44 JOURNAL Stories for the Road to 60 & Beyond Live Well • Stay Curious • Keep Moving