Out With 2012 and In With 2013

It is officially a new year and as many people like to think, a time to reset goals and priorities. I don’t know if I’d describe 2012 as a difficult year, but it definitely had enough major life moments that I’ll ever be able to forget it. Moving from Boston to SC, getting married, losing my dog Skip, losing my dad, making the jump to work for myself full time… yeah I think that was enough. Let’s just leave it by saying 2012 was a year of extremes.

If there is one thing I felt like I mastered in 2012 it was controlling my investments. The last 18 months have been an education in itself on learning investing and specifically the stock market, but going into 2013 I feel like I’ve made it over the education hurdle and would now consider myself a savvy investor. Of course I’ll make more stupid decisions going forward, but I have a strong framework in place where my likelihood of doing something boneheaded has gone down exponentially. It is a very powerful feeling when you feel you have control of your finances and no longer feel like you are living paycheck to paycheck.

Writing Things Out Helps Me Think

Every year, like most people, I like to do a couple of New Year’s resolutions. I don’t always write these down or share them but at least have a formalized concept in my mind. I will say that if you want to truly be held accountable then you have to write things down. It was five years ago that I made a New Year’s resolution to start blogging and shared that as the first blog post on .eduGuru. Looking back I think it’s safe to say that was a life changing event in my life. It is also something that I have kept doing all these years.

I recently read something about President Obama where he said one of the things he wanted to start doing more now that the election is over is keeping up with his journal. I’ve discovered that there really is something to writing down ideas, thoughts, feelings and publically sharing them. For the most part I have no idea if anyone ever reads these articles, but it is a public account of the kind of person that I am.

In the last two years I think I have barely written 20 blog posts on this, my personal blog. It is time to correct that. I’ve also slowed down on the writing on .eduGuru, but my blogging over at nuCloud has been way up this year. After all, that is my main job now. I think part of it is that I have fallen out of love with social media some, but I shouldn’t let that affect my personal sharing here. So my first resolution is to start writing/sharing more on this blog.

Reading Helps Me Learn New Things

I have always been a big reader. I have a voracious appetite for knowledge. I also go through these phases where I get deep into reading different things. For a while that was fantasy novels, blogs on inbound marketing, non-fiction novels and most recently everything related to investing. In 2013 I want to get back to reading more books and fewer articles. Don’t get me wrong, articles are important, but I feel like you lose something when you aren’t digging deep into a big hairy idea that a book presents.

In 2011 when I had a 30 minute bus commute back and forth to work I was able to knock back at least a novel a month. It’s time to start learning big again. Of course I also want to make a resolution to stay on top of my weekly Time and Sports Illustrated reading. The last six months I’ve been getting further and further behind on that. I’m attempting to get completely caught up now so I can start getting into my growing backlog of books. Does anyone have any good books that they want to toss my way? Over the last four years I’ve become an exclusively non-fiction reader so toss me any ideas!

Getting Back Into Baseball

I don’t have many “life goals,” but interestingly enough one of those is to coach 30 years of baseball/softball. So if you don’t know why coaching baseball is a life goal let me try to explain. Like most people, my love triangle consists of God, family (especially Heather), and friends. Once we get out of that there is nothing I love more than the game of baseball. I also love teaching so what better to  teach than baseball? Why 30 years? Well 30 just sounds like a nice big round number to really state that I see this as being my life’s work.

I have four years of coaching baseball/softball under my belt already. Two years with youth teams and two years managing the HubSpot softball team. I still love to play so the softball team has great appeal, but there is something fulfilling about working with kids. It’s not always about teaching kids my love of the game, but baseball is just as much a game about learning how to fail as it is about succeeding. Even the best professional hitters fail 70% of the time. There are so many life lessons in the sport, and unlike other major sports like football or basketball you don’t have to be larger than life or otherworldly gifted to succeed. Yogi Berra gave us the following famous quote about baseball after all, “Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical.”

Last year was an off year trying to make some major life changes, but I’m really looking forward to getting back into it this year. I’m working to build a church softball league right now. Heather is tired of always hearing me talk with people at church about a softball league, but she knows this is one of my life dreams.

Rounding Out the List

Of course we all have the standard goals to make more money and lose weight in 2013, so of course I’ll toss those out there too. Continuing to grow nuCloud as a business I’m proud to own and growing my marriage are also priorities. Feel free to interpret “growing” however you want. I’m not showing any of my cards on that one yet. 😉

Welcome 2013! I look forward to dominating you like all my years before. After all who could forget, this is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!