As I look back on 2024, I can’t help but also reflect on 2023. Where was my head at this time last year? How have I changed over the past year? What went according to plan, and what didn’t? For weeks, I dreaded this reflection because I knew there would be many failures or stalled initiatives. This weighed heavily on me, but I am now at ease. It has been a remarkable year, filled with massive ups and downs, all leading me to a stronger faith in Jesus.

2024 By The Numbers

You know the old saying, “The numbers don’t lie…” – there’s truth to that. In 2024, I set out to track several key aspects of my life: my weight, workout habits, reading the Bible in a year, and daily prayer habits. The results were quite revealing.

In the first six months of 2024, I diligently tracked my weight and workout progress. The chart below shows a tight correlation between my weight logs and cumulative workouts. However, during the summer and the latter half of 2024, things fell off dramatically, and my weight logs became sporadic.

Despite this, my cumulative workouts are impressive. It’s the most I have ever worked out in a single year. The first six months were intense, with me hitting CrossFit three days a week and the local gym an additional two to three days. At one point, I even worked out for 20 consecutive days. The second half, though, tells a different story. We canceled our CrossFit membership in June due to budget constraints, and starting a new job in mid-July turned my life into a blur.

Reading the Bible was a rewarding activity, even though I didn’t manage it daily. I used The Bible app to follow a plan to read the Bible from front to back. The chart shows a decline in my reading habit in August, coinciding with the start of my new job and a period of high stress. Thankfully, I got back on track eventually—God is good.

At the beginning of the year, I made it a habit to pray each time I read the Bible. This helped form a habit, but you can see a dip in the summer, mirroring my Bible reading habits. Despite this setback, I rediscovered the power of prayer during my spiritual low in August and September. Now, I pray daily without needing to read the Bible as a prompt.

Notable 2024

Things that are not explicitly called out in the goals or the numbers but I want to document are the following:

• 6 Churches Attended This Year
  1. The Trails – Celina, TX
  2. Hope Fellowship – Prosper, TX
  3. Prestonwood Baptist – Prosper, TX
  4. Lifeway Church – Celina, TX
  5. St. Sava Orthodox Church² – Allen TX
  6. St. John Neumann Catholic Church – Westlake, TX
• New job in Oil and Gas
  • Started a new job with Cora Minerals in Austin TX. This has been the biggest challenge of my life. I negotiated the job as a hybrid role. I have a small apartment in Austin and am away from the family 3-4 nights every week. This has put a ton of burden on Clancy and the kids. Each week I think we all cry about me having to leave. I am hopeful it will become lucrative, however it has been the opposite up to this point. Nearing the 6 month mark on this.
• Over the hill – turned 40 this year³
  • The only thing depressing about turning 40 this year is that I was not with my family. I am thankful I was able to have a nice dinner with Clancy the following weekend.
• Lost Loved Ones
  • I lost my God father Uncle Ned this fall to health complications and also a childhood best friend Matt to a tragic accident. These have both weighed on me in a pretty significant way. It has made me more spiritual and thankful each day when I wake. Rest in peace my brothers.
• Missed a big appointment
  • Financials have been such a massive burden. We set an appointment to explore a procedure to reverse a bug mistake we made on my body in the year 2016. We had the procedure scheduled for December but money has been so tight that we had to cancel it. I am very very saddedned by our situation and want to things to improve so badly. This rollercoaster has been a topic that I know has effected Clancy in a very bad way too. Her clock is ticking and we are running out of time.
    

2025 Goals and Resolutions

Now to the fun part of the year, where I get to dream and make goals. Now looking back at the previous year, it is clear that making a very long list of goals might not have been the best strategy. I mean, yes it feels good to write down all the thinbgs I want but it also sets you up for lots of goals not accomplished. Now in hindsight, looking back on 2024 looks more like a vision board than a list of goals to accomplish. It was like the goals were too many and it appears like a big failure. In reality, yes there were legit failures but also, many of the goals on the list are things that are absolutely on my vision board.

KPI’s

I am going to continue tracking KPIs this year here’s what I plan on tracking in 2025. This is a mix of hard goals and tracking performance.

• Weight – track weight throughout the year
• Work Out Days – I want to average 3 days per week in the gym
• Read Bible Days – not really a goal here but track it
• 100x Goal – 100x in 2025
• Fasting Days – 21 days in 2025 of fasting
• Go to Church 27 times

This is a mix of specific goals and general tracking performance.

Goals

• Invest Time in Clancy – I want to help her create art and pursue selling of art if she desires. Last year I had a monetary target listed as a goal, and yes, I want to help her make money, but that has to come at her time. This goal for me is about checking in with her often and doing the little things to help her ship art. I believe to accomplish this I will need to do the following:
  • Protect her time – this is tough because my current schedule demands that I am away from home several days per week. I do not have a solution for this YET
  • Reboot – get her away from kids on a vacation so she can truly reboot her heart.
  • Do – do the little things in her studio and online to help her. Do the little things around the house to declutter and set her up to win.
• Financial Winning – this means moving up and to the right. I don’t have a monetary target I want to write down but I can describe what I want.
  • Debt free
  • Savings – for life and for a home down payment
  • No worry about bills and life expenses
  • These things will come through hard work in my professional life and could also come through lifting Clancy up. We don’t really have any way of knowing the earinng potential from her art but it could change things in a very positive way.
• Prepare and Present Can’t Stop the Signal 2.0 – this is rebooting the presentation for focus on Drones. This is a low tier stretch goal.
  • Need to build a drone myself from open source HW and SW. This might be a stretch, I do not see my investing in the hw sw for this in the next 3 months, so this will likely be a stretch. I could probably ship a presentation on this, just won’t be able to demo HW in person ( not a deal breaker). If not a. drone specific presentation, it should be a refresh on the original. So much has been developed in the past 24 months tons to share with those interested.
• Health Goals – instead of making a bunch of individual goals, I am lumping my heath goals into one overall goal.
  • Bench 225 – this was within striking distance in 2024. Really focus on nutrition and supplements to get this.
  • Run 10 miles – I think I am a long way off from this but it would be amazing to run 10 miles straight. Treadmill or on road, either will work. Slav Squat? Yes, take this seriously and stretch!
• Reading Goal – Read 6 books this year. 2024 was about scripture and it fed my soul. In 2025 I want to read 6 classics, not even sure what books but I know I need this.
• Memorization – memorize 6 passages from the Bible. Think Psalm 23 power.
• Find my place in the world – this is about my career. I have been floating in the wind since I was let go at HPE in 2020, and this is a terrifying place to be in the year 2025 at age 40 with so much on the line (my wife and kids well being). I don’t know where I will go or what path I will take today but I do know that I trust in the Lord and that’s more than I could say a year or two ago.
• Find our forever home/community – is it North Texas? I don’t know. Is it back in Arkansas? It could be. I am praying on this guidance in a big way.
• Take a vacation with Clancy – we desperately need this.

Honestly, this year has been such a beatdown that making this years goals has been difficult. It’s like I don’t even want to dream because I’m afraid of not reaching the goal like I did in 2024. Of If I didn’t dream, that would be not having faith in the Lord. That would be disobeying and not trusting in the Father. That’s not me. I do have faith. I will continue to dream. Maybe a little more conservative in my prayers and things I write down but I will still dream.

2025, I am ready for you. I am open to receiving what you have to offer and I will continue to grow my faith. All other things will come through the Father.

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FOOTNOTES

1. Grok (verb): To understand something deeply and intuitively. The term, originating from Robert A. Heinlein’s 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land, signifies a profound, almost instinctive comprehension of a subject, beyond mere surface-level understanding.
   Grokked (verb, past tense) ↩︎
2. St. Sava was a life changing service. I have never been to an Orthodox church service but have been to many Baptist and Catholic services through out my life. I have never experienced a service that is more focused on worshiping Jesus. Jesus was front and center during the entire service. It was life changing. ↩︎
3. I made a pretty decent post about turning 40 earlier this year. I reflected on each of the decades I have been alive and even made some “goals” to accomplish in my 40’s. link ↩︎