2015 was probably the busiest year of my life. Aside from all the wedding related stuff, I took on new responsibilities at work, did some traveling with friends, and had a great time. This year will be a little more low key, but I still have some small vacations planned, including a solo hiking trip that I've wanted to do. Focus: What are you looking forward to this year? Alt Focus: What are you dreading in 2016?
Spring training is just a few short weeks away and for the month of March we kill it at the bar and on the off days I get a chance to go see the scenery, and by scenery I mean all the hot Scottsdale cougars day drinking at the games. Then as soon as that is over I am headed to Cabo to fish for a week. Alt. Focus I hate the holiday season so if it were up to me those months would get clipped
I feel like we just did this thread? Anyway, I'm looking forward to a Vegas trip, my first child, business hitting a new stride. It's gonna be a pretty crazy year, I think, and I am nervous but excited.
Grad school. Earning a living wage for the first time in my life (in America anyway). Fucking a half dozen or so new women. Being debt free (with two masters done!) and buying a Goddamned Ducati, riding it like it will bear my offspring, and figuring out being a grown up.
New Orleans for Halloween with the gents. It's a bunch of professional miscreants too. My prediction: someone will die. Found out this chick we used to know works at the Penthouse Club on Bourbon. So we can make this especially awkward. My mom wants to go to New Orleans around Christmas (we will avoid the PH Club that go 'round). My gal person wants to go to New Orleans as well. So, I'm probably buying a condo in New Orleans. Professionally, I am tinkering my portfolio, and will be finishing the remodel of this house. I will probably be heading to Austin to see how my friend is doing with his distillery in hopes to duplicate it here. These are also the things I am dreading. The real world is stupid and homosexual.
Last week, I just quit my cushy Fortune 100 marketing job to join the "family business" aka the company my Dad started about 20 years ago and has grown to 20-25 employees. While it is fairly developed, there are a lot of aspects that make it much like a start up and my Dad's nature is to take risks instead of being content with a comfortable living if he focused on the steady aspects of their revenue streams. I'll be handling international strategy and biz development which is going to be challenging but also exciting and pretty fun. In March alone I'll be traveling to Hong Kong, Switzerland, and probably India the beginning of April. Its the best pathway I have to becoming VERY successful as opposed to just comfortable, which is both stressful and exciting. With that, I'm going to have a TON of miles and points, so I look forward to taking a few extra trips as well. ALT-FOCUS: This is going to be a rough year for the market. Not in just performance, but in trading. The back half of 2015 was, as the head of a trading desk for a prominent firm in Chicago told me, the toughest trading environment he'd seen in 20 years. As I try to get more involved with swing trading and short term investing, likely going to be more growing pains and investment losses. I suppose I should paper trade or take a step back, but I find I don't learn or pick on even 25% as much as when you have skin in the game.
Focus: Travelling. Going to Ireland for vacation and Tennessee for a family reunion. I'm excited about both. Paying off el husband's student loan. It's gonna happen. Alt-Focus: the Holidays. Looking for a house. It sounds kind of fun but mostly stressful.
I'm going to lose 30 lbs. Maybe gain back 10 in muscle, we'll see. I'm already down 4.5 lbs, so I should def make it within the year.
Completing school. Making plans for a move. Baseball. Finishing the remodel. Alt focus - Loans. Debt. Moving. I try to make the best of things, but I don't relish some of this years hurdles.
I'm looking forward to growing our company. The first year I was there was fucking hard and depressing, but over the last year things have gotten orders of magnitude better. This thing has legs, and we're going at it hard, and it's probably the happiest I've ever been in a job. I mean, we had Bill Gates call up and say he's heard great things and wanted a demo, for fuck sakes. We're starting to make a splash, and it's fun. What I'm not looking forward to is helping my mom deal with the passing of my dad while we're living 4k kilometres apart. She's wrapped up all the short term "busy work" that has kept her occupied; government paperwork and process done, business wrapped up, house cleaned up, all his stuff distributed to friends and family or sent off to charity, and now she's left with nothing. Now that it's all over and she has nothing but free time on her hands, It's way, way tougher on her than she thought it would be, and she's still depressed. It really sucks being across the country from her, and although I tend to call her every day on my commute to and from work, it's still not the same thing. The one big thing that's keeping her motivated right now is that her and I are planning an African safari for 2017... 2 weeks feeding giraffes and petting lions.
Focus: In two weeks I get to do my job in a live environment and put all the training I've done into practice which will be good, the extra money isn't bad either. I also plan on doing some travelling at some stage this year and I'm thinking fuck Christmas and going to Thailand or Bali instead. Alt Focus: The girl I want to be with more than anything just moved back to Australia to finish her last semester of university and I'll be in the middle of the desert for almost all of it. Also depression, shit sucks.
Focus: Finally finishing my associate's degree in Diesel Technology (I was going to finish my last two credits in 2013, but had to drop out in the first week due to, uh, "legal obligations."). Getting a decent job. Alt. Focus: The fucking presidential election. Not just all the campaign bullshit, but I am genuinely scared of Hillary or Trump getting into the White House. Worst of all is that I can't even fucking vote anymore.
Focus: Going to Argentina with ms. katokoch in a few months. She'll be working in Buenos Aires for a few weeks and we'll take advantage of the opportunity to do a little traveling there together. The usual hunting and fishing trips too. Turkey hunting with my brother in about two months and going on a canoeing trip in three. We're headed back to the lake we went to last May and I look forward to catching a shitton of fish again. Also, wedding planning and stuff now that we've got a location and date for next year down. It won't be a big elaborate thing so I'm actually looking forward to it and we have lots of time to take care of it all. Alt-focus: Work. It got a lot better in the past year but as February was RFP hell for me, we'll see how this year continues.