Every year, I look back and take stock of what I’ve done, where I’ve gone, and how my life has grown and changed over the previous 12 months and I make a list. Some years, the list is quite long. 2010 and 2011 were very active & productive years where I accomplished much personally and professionally. Over that two year span, I got married, traveled to Rome for the Honeymoon, helped Impulse be acquired by GameStop, moved to Texas, and began building a new chapter for the digital distribution platform I’d spent 4 years working on while at Stardock. My wife and I built a financial safety net that can see us through the toughest of times, and we bought and completely paid off a new car (and purchased another one). There’s no doubt that those two years were ones of great progress.
2006 – 2009 were pretty strong years too. Moved to Michigan to work at a game/software dev company, got involved in Impulse, met my now wife, and turned my financial life around ($14k in debt, living paycheck to paycheck to debt-free and a healthy emergency fund). I also did a bit of travel around the country, went to a few weddings (one where I was the maid of honor! Yeah, it’s a long story), and started to think about where I wanted my life to go.
So for 6 years, I was moving at a pretty good rate and felt like things were on a good trajectory.
Then we hit 2012.
To start, 2012 has not been a bad year. I’ve remained gainfully employed, paid off the second car and managed to squeeze in a tiny bit of travel. Nothing really all that bad happened the entire year.
Then again, nothing exceptionally good happened either.
2012 was a year. It was a dependable, stable year where things kept going. That’s about all I can say about it, and that bugs the heck out of me. I’m a person who is built for change and growth and new experiences. I’m happiest when I’m building things and pushing forward into new and interesting challenges, traveling to new places, trying new foods and in general experiencing new things. When things slow down, or stagnate in any area of my life, I start to get antsy for change. But the question now is, what do I change? How do I do it?
2013 needs to be a year of change for me. It can’t be another year of coasting through, putting in my 8 hours at work, then coming home and vegging out in front of the TV. Thankfully, it already looks to be headed in the right direction with a trip overseas planned for the end of January.
Travel
My wife and I love to travel. International travel especially! There’s something about getting on a plane in a familiar place, and hours later getting off and finding ourselves in some completely new, foreign and unknown city/country that really appeals to us. 2012 didn’t have us doing much travel of any kind (two trips back to Michigan and one business trip for me to San Francisco), so 2013 needs to be different!
Already there’s some planned overseas travel (both fixed and tentative):
- Iceland (January) – Really looking forward to this one! It’s a country neither my dad nor sister have ever been to (and they’ve both been all over the world), so this is a little victory for me 🙂
- Europe (at some point) – My friend Liz and her husband are moving to the Netherlands in early 2013 as a temporary job relocation (2-3 years). Once they’re settled in, we’re planning on taking 2 weeks to visit with them and see a bit of mainland Europe (I’ve only been to England and Italy, so the main body of Europe is still unexplored for me).
- Pennsylvania (Christmas) – It’s my parents turn to have us visit for Christmas this year, so there will be an end-of-year trip to State College for the holidays.
Personal
This is a mixed bag of random things, but mostly in 2013 I want to get my personal and financial life organized and actually moving again. Once I kicked the credit card debt, then things were focused on an emergency fund and then paying off the cars. Now that all that’s done, we have cash that’s just sitting in the bank, not doing a whole lot for us. On a more “me” front, I want to get the misc bits of my life organized. Right now there’s a whole lot of vegging out playing games or watching TV in my off-hours time. I want to take that unproductive time/activity and turn it into something useful.
So to keep my personal goals attainable, I am going to just set two for 2013:
- Get a Financial Planner/Adviser – Coming out of the market crash of recent years, high unemployment, a housing market in the basement and so much fear & doubt about the economy as a whole, I’ve erred far too much on the side of conservative caution. As a result, outside of our 401(k) plans, we’re almost 100% cash based. Time to take some of that money and see if we can do some more interesting things with it.
- Learn to Code – This is one I toy with every year. While I don’t intend to become a programmer by trade, I do feel the time has come for me to build the basic skillset so I can take the next steps in my career. I work with developers every day, and my lack of a solid understanding of what they do is hampering my ability to communicate with them. Plus, if I’m going to keep working in the game industry, it wouldn’t hurt to be able to make my own little silly prototype games. I’m going to start this one easy with the Code Academy program and see where it goes.
Professional
For almost 5 years now I’ve been working on Impulse. I was in the room when the initial plan was hatched and worked along side the devs at Stardock as it was built. I helped launch the very first titles on the platform, became a key technical contributor and subject matter expert for how the platform worked. I worked to help complete the sale of Impulse from Stardock to GameStop, and spent the last year and a half with that transition and integration. Five years working on the same product, seeing it through countless changes and revisions. What’s planned for Impulse for 2013 is certainly interesting, but I think this year is the year for me to find a new challenge. What does that new challenge look like? I don’t know yet.
This is the most difficult one to “target” with specifics. But I have a feeling that as I achieve my other goals, this one will slot into place. Throughout my life, I’ve found that if I get the rest of my life going in the right direction, I’m more able to see and act on new opportunities as they become available.
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So that’s my look back at 2012 and a brief look ahead at 2013. Hope everything turns out well!