It’s been a crazy busy year and I haven’t written anything at all.
In May of 2025 I got an unexpected opportunity to work at a pretty elite firm in the tech and trading world, and after going through the rounds of interviews, I started working there in July of 2025 and the rest has just been a blur. Hard to believe it’s been over a year already.
In that time, I ended up selling my boat, my beautiful beautiful Island Packet 420 sailboat. When I bought it, I thought that being only 45-50 minutes away would be close enough, but when you have to do maintenance all the time, you just really need to be close. Also, I ended up realizing that living on it would not be a good option and not conducive to me having the proximity I needed to be a part of my daughter’s life.
And then there has been the job, which I threw myself into and have been working pretty hard learning the platform, and learning all the cool new tech out there. It’s been the most fun and satisfying time to build things and just get after it. Totally been geeking out and loving it. Of course, there’s a lot of pain learning the firm’s platform and getting the hang of things, but that’s just part of it.
Last summer we went to Zion and the Grand Canyon, and then shortly after we got back, my girlfriend got a new job. Then earlier this year, we got engaged and bought a house in Old Town, Alexandria. We’ve traveled to El Salvador, Costa Rica, Maine, then just got back from Southport, North Carolina where we spent some time with friends and family and had an unofficial “wedding”. We’ll be finishing it up officially at the end of the month.
And during all this time while dealing with a new house, new jobs, and all those entail, we’ve been battling a lot in our personal lives with elder loved ones passing away and others slowly fading. And amongst a couple of other things, it’s been really tough.
But my daughter is doing great and she absolutely loves us living so close to her now. We’ll be able to spend all sorts of time together and just having the proximity changes everything. We couldn’t be happier.
Duke is doing great and still spritely at almost 12 years old, which amazes the vets when I take him because he’s in such good shape.
Other than all that, I’m having a blast building all the cool software I’ve had in my head all these years but just couldn’t manifest. I was never a strong coder. I could do it, but it took me a long time and I just could never remember the syntax enough to be efficient. But, I understood how it all worked, and now, I’m just chugging along building things all over the place. It’s an awesome time for me and I’m really enjoying it. We’ll see where this all leads.