What Is This All About?

All right, so here is the deal: about a month and a half ago (as I write this now) I turned thirty-three.  This sort of puts me over the line--in my mind--from being a guy "just barely into his thirties" into a full fledged "thirty-something."  Scary, huh?

I'll forgo the 1,500 words of self-indulgent navel gazing I wrote up talking about why I want to do this, and just get right to the point (that's a theme I think you'll see most of the time here).  Basically, I have seven more years until I turn forty.  Seven more years until I am officially middle-aged.  Seven more years of still being young enough to chase my dreams and earn my place in the world.

When you think about it, there are two kinds of forty-year-olds out there.  On one hand you have the sad, pudgy guys who play poker with their friends on Friday nights, sadly ogle girls half their age, and retell old high school football stories ad nauseum.  And on the other, you have the guys who look good in fitted t-shirts, mountain bike on the weekends, and enjoy the kind of success that make the rest of us wonder what the big secret is.

The way I figure it there are exactly two ways I can spend November 10th, 2015:

1.  Commiserating with friends (over an expensive bottle of Scotch) about all the forgotten things I had planned to do in my life; or

2.  Celebrating a major milestone birthday with my friends (over an expensive bottle of Scotch) and looking back on the past several years of accomplishment and success.

And while either way I end up drinking some pretty fine Scotch, I'd like to take door number two if I can in any way help it.

So that's what this site is all about.  It's a place to chronicle my efforts, stay focused, and keep myself honest.  To get where I need to be seven years from now, I have a number of specific areas I need to work on, and for each of these, some short and long term goals.  I'll keep a somewhat dynamic list of my near term goals, along with my current status on each (check the sidebar), and each day I'll comment on my progress on them. 

I plan to keep this place an honest-to-goodness, unapologetic blog.  I am going to try to write in here every day, and I expect my entries to be more style than substance and, at times, a little more raw that I would feel appropriate for my main blog.  This is sort of an experiment in progress, so bear with me as we go.

Thanks for reading, and please feel free to comment or suggest away on anything I put up here.