Year in Review and Plan for Next Year

It’s been two years since I graduated college (I still think in terms of academic years). The first year was extremely tough: I hated my job, hated where I was living, didn’t have a lot of friends, and I was wracked by anxiety because of all this. Year number two could not have been more different.

This past year has been, without a doubt, the best year of my life. In 2005/2006, I moved into a great apartment in New York City and fell in with an amazing group of friends. These are people that know how to have a great time – and we certainly did lots of that this year! Equally important though, nearly all of them are very successful in their academic and professional careers. They are also a bit older than I am (mostly early 30’s) which is good, I think, because I’ve always tended to get along best with people who were a few years older. For the first time in my life, I feel a real connection with my friends – I feel closer to them than I do my family (something I plan to address this year, actually).

Where this year fell short was in the professional sense. Instead of getting all worked up about how much I hated my job, I kind of fell into a brain dead complacency. I got my work done but I had very little focus. I still read the WSJ and the Economist but I never focused on it – I was just going through the motions all year. It really hit me when I was interviewing for an assistant controller job at a hedge fund recently. The Controller asked me what I knew about CDS. As someone who claims to read the Wall Street Journal every day, how could I not explain what Credit Default Swaps are? I have read numerous articles about it but yet I couldn’t tell him what they were! I was reading the paper but not actually retaining anything – this is a huge contrast to the way I was in senior year of college. I would spend countless hours at the library just reading… and I had such focus! I remember one day that I became interested in offshore trusts (weird, I know) and spent all afternoon reading in the law library about the subject. Time just flew by when I would read about this stuff. I can hardly think of a single moment in the past two years where I have found that kind of focus or had that kind of curiosity.

Some general goals I have for myself for this year:

1. Regain that old focus and intensity I used to have. I want that to manifest itself in three primary areas:
1. Work: I want to do a great job at work
2. Workouts: I want to have great, intense workouts and I want to gain at least 5 pounds of muscle, but preferably 10. (Right now I am approximately 156 lbs)
3. Education: I need to finish the CPA, begin studying for GMATs, and focus on really reading the WSJ and Economist

2. I need to maintain the great friendships I have formed over the past year and I hope to cultivate new ones.

3. I want to come out to my family

4. I want to try having a “serious” relationship – something I have yet to do

5. I want to avoid “lifestyle creep” this year. I will be making considerably more money but the majority of it should go to savings because I am doing just fine on what I make now