2023 was one of the craziest, busiest, best, and most transformative years I’ve lived so far in this life overall. It was a year of some deep inner reflection. We recently watched “The Family Plan” with Mark Wahlberg and the first monologue of that film really summed up what this year was like for me:
There comes a time in every man’s life when he asks himself: Am I living the life I should be, or am I capable of something greater? Is there a change that I can make in my life right now to become the best version of myself? Who do I wanna be? It’s never too late to become the man that you’ve always wanted to be.
To be very honest, I was not in a good place at the very beginning of 2023. I wasn’t happy with who I was and I wasn’t happy with some of the decisions I had been making. So, with the total support of my wife, I made up my mind that I was going to change a lot of things…and I stuck to it.
Fortunately, some absolutely incredible work opportunities became available to me, and I got very busy. These new opportunities were such a blessing, and perfectly-timed — they helped me rediscover my creative spark and provided me with a workload that allowed me to shift my focus to my work. That helped me make some of those changes in my life and lifestyle. At a time that I needed it the most, it really couldn’t have been more perfect.
Speaking of
Being Busy
This year I had the privilege of working with 38 different clients and creating 90+ new designs for them. I am so very thankful for the new work relationships that came from this year and I cannot wait to see what all is in store for 2024!
Clients Served
New Designs Created
Pigeon Forge
We started off the year with a birthday trip for the boys to Pigeon Forge. They had been wanting to go, and they a wanted it to snow so badly. We booked the trip back in October of 2022, so there was no way we’d know if it would snow or not…but it just so happened it started snowing as soon as we stepped foot outside of the car at the cabin on the night we arrived. It snowed all night and most of the next day! It was amazing and they were ecstatic! Definitely a core memory trip.
Baseball
We had one heck of a year with baseball! Both of our dudes played an awesome Spring season. K tried his hand at catching for the first time and found out that he was an absolute natural at it. K ended up making it to All-Stars, and while P didn’t, he kept his head up and worked hard all summer to improve — so much that he led the team in batting average for majority of the Fall ball season (all with a broken wrist)! I love that determination, man.
Unfortunately, during All-Stars K injured his cornea in a completely freak accident with one of his buddies during batting practice before Game 1. The green area in the image below is the chunk that was taken out of his cornea. He was a trooper though, as he insisted he wanted to play in Game 2 the following day.
Soulcon Challenge
So like I said, this year was a year of tranformation for me. At the end of the boys’ spring baseball season, Kyle the head coach asked in our Coaches group chat if any of us would be interested in participating in the Soulcon Challenge. I had never heard of it before, so I did some quick research and found out that it was a type of fitness program that combines physical / mental / and spiritual fitness. Though completely outside of my comfort zone, I immediately thought this was something I needed to do. So…I signed up and I gave it my all. And it was incredible. I lost about 25lbs in total, I got into a habit of working out regularly 5x a week, eating clean, and reduced my daily intake of soda to one glass a day, and it started me down a path of getting significantly closer to God. Before the Soulcon challenge, I had never fasted for 24 hours before. The first time was rough, but it got easier the more I did it — so much that I stretched it to 2 days with water/coffee only.
We started attending church regularly and we even do daily bible readings each morning during our quiet time. I owe all of this to Kyle for inspiring me through the things he would say to the baseball team through the season, and for reaching out with that invitation to join him in doing the Soulcon Challenge. He’s been such a great encourager to me and I greatly appreciate his friendship.
For 2024 I believe I’m going to go through the Soulcon Challenge again and continue down the health journey side, as well as continue to strengthen my relationship with Christ.
During Soulcon, I ran 2 5ks a week, with a 10k added about mid-way through the program. I was happy that I got to run with my buddy Jason (who was also doing Soulcon with me) and my always super-supportive wife. By the end of the Soulcon Challenge, I improved my 5k time by 4 minutes and 22 seconds.
Started Creating Art Again
As I mentioned, I rediscovered my creative spark this year and by doing so I started creating art for fun again. Feeling inspired by the new Queens of the Stone Age album, I decided to make a series based on QotSA. I also started on a series based on the “Seven Deadly Sins”, but those are still a work in progress.
Beach Trip with Friends and Kiddos
This trip was such an awesome experience. Yes we had rain off and on, but it didn’t hurt the amount of fun we were able to have. This was the first trip that we’ve taken with friends + kids, and it was such a blast. We spent time at the beach, we hunted crabs, we played mini-golf, and just had a great time hanging out. It amazes me when I sit back and watch our kids play with my best friend since high school’s kids. We were in 9th grade when we became inseparable and we used to talk about how weird it would be to be old men sitting around and watching our kids grow up — and now, as an older (not yet old) man, I can say that it truly is weird. But in the best way possible.
Braves Games
We took the dudes to see a couple of the Atlanta Braves baseball games throughout the season. One of them was the game where they retired Andruw Jones’ number, which was an awesome thing to experience!
Our Dudes Started Middle School
And just like that our kids graduated from elementary school and started their Junior High years. It’s absolutely mind-blowing to me that they’re already at this age. Time is such a thief. It shouldn’t move this quickly…
Now, they’re already halfway through their 5th grade year…and in only 6 1/2 years they’ll be graduating High School. They’ve come a long way since those 3lb 14oz premie babies. And we’re so proud of both of them.
Dashboard Confessional / Counting Crows Concert
Alicia and I used to go to multiple concerts every single year, including the Beale Street Music Festival each year in Memphis, TN. After the mess that was the covid year, we fell off from it. I went to one show in 2022, but Alicia hadn’t been to a show since 2019. Some of our friends bought tickets to see Counting Crows, and while that sounded fun, I wasn’t sold until a few months later when I found out that Dashboard Confessional was going to be there too. So in May we asked our kids if they wanted to go with us, and they were stoked about it. When August came around and it was hotter than the surface of the sun, they changed their mind about wanting to go the day before the show…so instead, we gave their tickets to some of our friends. I had never been to the Sand Mountain Amphitheater, but it was a really awesome venue!
First Broken Bone
P had his first experience with a broken bone that he got from falling while riding a hover board at his friend’s house. He got lucky and was able to wear a brace for 6 weeks instead of having to have a cast.
Life with boys, haha.
Falling In Reverse / Avenged Sevenfold Concert
After the Dashboard Confessional show revived our love for live music, we snatched up tickets to see Falling in Reverse and Avenged Sevenfold. We have seen A7X a couple of times already, so we were really there to see FiR, and they did not disappoint! That show was phenomenal!
Next Tattoo Piece on my Halloween Sleeve
I made a bit more progress on my sleeve this year and got another tattoo from the incredible Victoria Jordan, and just in time to kick off Spooky Season!
Spooky Season
October is our favorite month of the year, hands down. This year our dudes wanted to be “something scary” for Halloween, so they chose killer clowns and they looked amazing!
We also were invited to accompany one of their buddies on his first-ever haunted house experience, and that was a blast for them.
15th Anniversary Trip
This year Alicia and I celebrated our 15th year of marriage and we spent a long weekend in this incredible Air BNB that had this absolutely breathtaking view with wall-to wall windows. That was one of the best trips ever, and it was a perfect getaway for us.
Basketball
K decided to sign up for basketball out of the blue this year, after not playing for several years. His brother wasn’t interested in it at all (he gets that from me, haha), but K is loving it.
Pigeon Forge Trip 2
Throughout the 2023 year, the boys have begged once again to go back to Pigeon Forge for their birthday. We’re a pretty big fan of “experiences” more than gifts, so we planned it out and made it happen once again. This time around though we were able to get tickets to do the things we wanted to do in January but couldn’t due to them being either sold out or closed for the entire month of January. Aside from nearly all of us getting a cold, it was an awesome trip too. And unfortunately there was no snow this time around.
Out with the old, in with the new.
2023 was kind of a really weird year. Not bad at all, just weird. Something about it felt…odd…pretty much the whole year. Maybe it was the amount of changes that happened in mine and Alicia’s lives, maybe it was the state of the world we are all living in now, or something else entirely…but it was definitely a different kind of year. That personal and professional growth + self-improvement though…yeah, man. I’ll gladly take more of that in 2024.