2014 is come and gone. For me and my poor memory, it’s all but a distant past. Not really, but it sounds like the start to a good post. 2014 was a year of a lot of mixed emotions. In terms of business, it was a very frustrating year — I poorly negotiated some contracts, regretted those negotiations, loathed that it is so hard to find people you can trust fully in business (we’ve traded handshakes for 1200 page contracts), you get the picture. I learned a lot on the business side of things and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. So in the end, yeah, on the business side it wasn’t so bad. We paid the bills and put a little aside for a rainy day.

On the personal side of things, it was an amazing year for me. I was reunited with my wife after a four month work separation. After a six-year long battle with Bank of America over a house from three lifetimes ago, they finally accepted a short-sale. That left me with a $90,000 tax bill which gave me a bit of a scare until it was forgiven…thanks Congress, Senate, and Obama. That made us debt-free other than student loans! I also closed my Bank of America account. I did this on my birthday for extra satisfaction. We got the opportunity to live in a nice little cottage on a golf course for six months. Okay, it was a guest house, but hey, it was nice and I enjoyed it immensely.

We tried to do some soul searching by doing a Kairos Missions Course and attending some conferences including Traction West and Joyce Meyers. We also officially joined Christ Community Church.

We did more volunteering including meals on wheels, Amy worked with World Relief, we attended a thanksgiving banquet with refugees, we visited people in prison. We gave more away this year than ever before. Not just to churches or non-profits, but to people around us.

We travelled to Big Sur, Venice, Iceland, North Carolina, Yosemite, Reno, and Kingsburg. We fell in love with Nevada City.

I visited my family and extended family.

We celebrated our four year anniversary and are having sex more and more often (sounds silly but this is a great accomplishment that I may share in another post).

We met new friends that we really enjoy, started eating healthier, and going to the gym.

Amy published articles. I finished a product called Rezku (restaurant reservation system and floor management) that people are buying and a company called Guest Innovations (formerly Dinnerwire) is being built on.

We went and saw plays and shows including Blue Man Group, Celtic Women, Bill Cosby, and community theater.

We moved in with the in-laws. The rainy day fund doesn’t come without a price.

I even tried a little country line-dancing.

Looking back, 2014 was a great year. So why am I so glum about 2015? I’m not! I’m excited about 2015. Which is why my wife and I are calling it a year of failures. We are finally back on our feet. Maybe a little wobbly, but we are up and we have a list of things to tackle this year. Some of them are big…maybe too big. But we aren’t scared; or as they say in the south, “We ain’t skeered”. Being in total agreement with each other that it’s okay to fail is such a freeing feeling. It unties that knot in your stomach and gives you the confidence to tackle it head on.

So, we expect to fail this year. But at the end of the year, I’ll be able to look back and say, “Yeah, I did that!”.