Playing With AI, Fashion, And Life After Forty

Why I chose to begin again after forty — and how AI brought my creativity back

I have always loved to draw. Not in the “gifted prodigy” way, not in the sense of galleries or awards, but in a quiet, everyday way. I was the girl who filled her notebooks with sketches of shoes and dresses, patterns and colors. My lines were never exceptional, but they carried me into a private world where imagination stitched its own fabrics.

And I always loved fashion. Not for the brands or the price tags, but for the feeling of expressing yourself in color, in fabric, in movement. A scarf draped just so, the way a bag swings on your shoulder, how shoes carry you through the world with a little rhythm of their own. Fashion, for me, was always a kind of silent conversation.

But here’s the truth: I never became a designer. Life carried me into other responsibilities, other choices. Drawing and fashion remained something I admired, loved, played with at the edges.

And then—long after I turned forty—I became something else entirely: a data scientist.

Starting Over After Forty

When I first mentioned that I wanted to study data science, people around me looked at me as if I had suggested learning ballet or astrophysics at forty.

“You’re too old.”
“It’s too complicated.”
“You’ll be competing with kids in their twenties and thirties. Forget it.”

But something in me refused to listen. I had already lived enough years to know that the voice inside me—the one that said try—was worth trusting. So I ignored the warnings, rolled up my sleeves, and studied. I wrestled with statistics, machine learning, algorithms that made my head spin. I learned Python instead of sketching lines.

And slowly, impossibly, it began to make sense.

At forty, I stepped into a brand new world. And today, I work in it every day. My colleagues are mostly men, mostly in their thirties. But they respect me, they treat me as an equal. And I carry with me the quiet pride that I did not let age write the ending to my story.

A Different Kind of Drawing

The funny thing is, life has a way of giving back old loves in new forms.

In recent months, I discovered AI tools that can create images. At first I thought of them as playful gadgets. But then I wondered: what if I gave them something from my own world?

So I took photos of my shoes. My bags. The everyday things I wear and carry. I placed them into the AI and waited. And what came back astonished me.

Suddenly, my real belongings were reborn as high-fashion illustrations. My red shoes stood on dreamlike runways, my bag glowed against a surreal background, my outfits became sketches that looked as though they had come from a designer’s hand.

It was like my teenage sketchbooks had been given a digital heartbeat.

The Joy of Play

There is something magical about play when you’re over forty. As children, we are told play is natural. As adults, we are told play is wasteful. But in reality, play is fuel. It reminds us that imagination is not bound by age.

I am not creating these AI images to sell, or to impress, or to chase likes. I create them because they make me smile. They remind me of the girl with the notebook, the one who drew shoes in the margins. They remind me that every part of life is allowed to hold both discipline and delight.

I spend my workdays analyzing data, writing code, solving problems that demand precision. And then I open my laptop at night, throw my bag into an AI tool, and suddenly I’m a fashion designer again. It feels like oxygen.

The Truth About “Too Old”

When I think back to the voices that told me I was too old to start over, I feel a mix of sadness and defiance.

Sadness, because I know how many women have listened to those voices and let their dreams die.
Defiance, because I didn’t.

And what I’ve learned is this: after forty, you are not too late for anything. You are not too late to study, to begin, to try, to play. You are not too late to discover a new career, a new love, a new self.

I am not the most gifted artist. I am not the youngest data scientist. But I am a woman who refused to shrink. And that, in the end, matters more.

Living in Two Worlds

Sometimes I smile at the irony: my days are filled with algorithms, my nights with fashion sketches spun by artificial intelligence. It is as though two halves of myself—the logical and the artistic—are finally holding hands.

And maybe that is what it means to be over forty: we no longer need to choose one path and stay in it forever. We are free to weave together the pieces that matter, even if they seem contradictory.

I can be a scientist and a dreamer. I can work in tech and still adore fashion. I can be taken seriously in a male-dominated field and still play with AI images of my red shoes.

And you can too.

A Note to Any Woman Reading This

If you have been told it is too late, let me be proof that it isn’t.
If you have been told you are too old, let me be the one who whispers: nonsense.
If you have been told to forget your dream, let me remind you that your dream has been waiting for you to remember it.

At forty, at fifty, at sixty—we are not fading. We are still glowing. Still growing.

AI is just one tool. For me, it became a way to reconnect with fashion and drawing, to mix past loves with present skills. For you, it may be something entirely different. But the joy of discovery is there, waiting.

And the only requirement is that you say yes to yourself.

Still Learning, Still Creating

When I see my shoes transformed into digital fashion sketches, I laugh. I laugh because life is funny that way—it brings us back to what we love, often in the most unexpected ways.

But I also feel proud. Because I know the bigger story here isn’t the AI or the fashion sketches. The bigger story is that I didn’t stop learning. I didn’t let the world tell me I was finished.

And if I have one message to share through After Forty Raindrop, it is this:
You are never finished.

So go on—study, play, create, explore. Throw your dreams into the air like confetti and see how they fall. Put your shoes into an AI tool and laugh at the results. Sign up for the class they told you was too difficult. Try, fail, try again.

Because after forty, life isn’t over. In many ways, it has only just begun.

✨ If you enjoyed this story about creativity and starting over, you might also love my post on outfits that recharge your confidence after forty. Because sometimes, style is not just what we wear — it’s how we step back into our power.

👉 Autumn Energy Reset: Outfits That Recharge Your Confidence After 40