Scribbles

Gino‘s getting married!  In 3 days I’ll be on a plane to Peru for the wedding, so now would be best for some closing thoughts for the year.

A quick mental review of the year leaves me amazed at the major events in the 2008: career transition, cross-country migration, relationship, the introduction to Salsa dancing. Not the typical year. I suspect the slowdown in business in the last few months have lulled me into a false sense of “lack of activity” which brings upon my surprise when I really think about what’s happened in 2008.

Between my last months in NY and about 4 months in LA, I made the effort to learn the neighborhoods and try things out.  In that, I feel pretty lucky to experience two major metropolitan cities.  While I traveled a lot during b-school and even attended class in some amazing places, there was never any time to slow down and learn about the locale.  And while doing consulting, I spent so much time on the road that every weekend was filled with social activities that left little time for getting to know NYC.  I took advantage of my good fortune to do the local things, such as the sushi lunch special in midtown, or read the Sunday LA Times over fresh orange juice and french press coffee at the Farmer’s Market.

Career-wise, I took the leap from working for large corporations all my professional life to becoming an entrepreneur.  The contrast between being a peg in a the corporate machinery of tens or hundreds of thousands of employees and being the one decision maker running business development, IT, and accounting could not be more striking.  And as if that wasn’t enough, I came on board for FitFiend in hopes of propelling it to become a meaningful social site in its niche.

Since my blog is not designed to attract as many readers as possible, I tend to avoid discussion of my dating and relationship status.  (So much advice out there about juicy sexy dating postings for attracting traffic) I’m not keeping any big secrets, I’m just not blogging about it.  What I will disclose is that my current situation is different than what I’ve experienced in the past.  I’ll leave it at that on this public forum.  If you want more, you’ll have to buy me a beer in person.

With all the changes, I won’t complain about the challenges.  My biggest take-away this year has been how conscious I have become of trade-offs in life, be it money versus freedom, location versus rent, and on and on.  I realize that being aware of them and making the clear decisions, more appropriately, having the option to make the decisions, has made life harder and more rewarding.  These trade-offs became salient in the process of my career transition.  In my old job, most of the goals were clear and the tasks to accomplish them are defined in the role.  Now, I can take the afternoon off to watch a movie, or I can tackle some completely random project that may or may not help the business.  But it’s not limited to business decisions.  I’ve taken that lesson and applied it to all aspects of my life, striving to identify the trade-offs.  I don’t make any judgment on which is better, more or less choice in relation to uncertainty.  For me, the increased degrees of freedom seems appropriate at this stage of my life.

In closing, allow me to predict that 2009 will be more career focused.  Not foreseeing any geographical moves, I should have more energy to develop my start-ups and explore LA.  While the former may be harder with the slowing economy, the latter seems promising as I make new friends and reunite with old ones.  So as I sign off for 2008, I wish you a fun and safe holidays.  Thank you for your support all year long, and please remember that you certainly have mine.