My Goals For 2022

I recently wrote a blog that looked at the year 2021 in review. Like anyone else, I had a lot of ups and downs. It was certainly a year of a lot of change, with the acquisition of a company I worked at for over seven years, several subsequent job changes, getting engaged, doing book interviews, moving to Boston, and much more. While in some ways change can be very exciting, I am also a creature of habit. For that reason, I like to think ahead and visualize what I want to accomplish in the future. So I decided to write a list of five goals for the year 2022 to see if I can hold myself accountable to certain achievements I would like to have in the next year. These are in no particular order and they are all very important to me.

Pick Up An Old Hobby

When I lived in New York City, I was semi-regularly training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I also belonged to a recreational/intramural soccer team for many years. On my weekends, I would visit with my little brother from the Big Brother Big Sister program. Suffice it to say, I kept myself pretty busy on top of being a sales leader in my day-to-day role during the week.

The pandemic forced me to shut down the soccer and Jiu-Jitsu, primarily because I moved away from the city. I still visit my little brother once a month and make trips to NYC in order to do so. But I have been hoping to get back into Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or to take on soccer again. My “excuse” was that I was training for a marathon and wanted to avoid injury, and Jiu-Jitsu is a sport that is ripe for injuries. But I am hoping to run another marathon this year (which is another goal further below), and once I have done that, I really will not be able to use that excuse any more.

My hope is that picking up an old hobby will help me to branch out in the city of Boston and make some new friends while of course bringing on the nostalgia of something I once enjoyed. I recently went to my high school to help out with wrestling practice and had a lot of fun. Who knows – maybe more of that is in my future in 2022.

Pick Up A New Hobby

One of the most rewarding parts of life is to take on something new and to become proficient at it. When I first moved to New York City many years ago, I was depressed. I had few friends and I had no hobbies outside of my job. It was not until I decided to branch out into some professional networking groups, joining an intramural soccer team, or taking on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu that I started to find myself at peace. Suddenly my time was occupied with new passions and new endeavors to become proficient in.

I hope in 2022 that I will be able to identify a new hobby. During the pandemic, I picked up golf and became fairly addicted to it. I assume that this will continue in 2022. But I am hopeful that there can be something entirely new that I decide to take on. What it is remains to be determined, and I will know whether I am truly challenging myself if I decide to fulfill this goal.

Read More Books

Despite being a writer and a former English major, reading does not come naturally for me like it once used to. Why? Because there are so many things to do during the day that sitting down to read a book simply makes me anxious.

The thing is, I get so much from the books that I read. They truly go a long way for me. I just finished “The Qualified Sales Leader” and wrote down dozens of things that I would like to do for my team at my new company. So, I’ve made it a goal to read more books. I think I want to start with one book a month and eventually get to the point where I can do one every other week. I’m holding myself accountable by blocking time on my calendar, and I am going to make an effort to get more into Audiobooks so that I no longer have the excuse of “time.” If I will be doing lots of airplane travel, driving in the car, or even training runs for the marathon, I will have plenty of “empty” time that can be filled listening to books or reading them the old-fashioned way.

Have A Successful Wedding

This one seems fairly obvious and intuitive, but ideally you only get one of these, so you want to make sure you do it right. There is a lot of planning and logistics involved in organizing a special event for nearly 200 people, and even 9 months away, it feels incredibly stressful. This will be without question the most important event of my year, so I plan to carve out time to make sure it goes off without a hitch.

Write My Next Book

When I wrote “Authentic Selling: How to Use the Principles of Sales in Everyday Life” at the end of 2020, I looked at it as a low-risk endeavor. That is because the book was related to my day-to-day sales job, so at worst, it would only help me build a brand and more credibility in my current career path.

The thing is, I ultimately want to be a screenwriter. So writing about something topical to my current trade was low-risk because it did not require me to be evaluated for the kind of writing I would ultimately like to do.

I intend to publish a set of short stories in 2022 called “How Boys Learn.” The stories are adapted from my senior thesis at Princeton under the same title, written under the tutelage of esteemed author Edmund White. I have done a little bit of work on the project, but I really need to hunker down in the beginning of 2022 if I am going to finish the project on time and get the book out before the end of the year. It is going to be a lot of work, but I am really excited about this and what it might say about my future prospects as a writer.

Run Another Marathon

In October 2021, I ran my first marathon – The Boston Marathon – as a fundraiser for the Boston Police Foundation. I wrote all about it. Long story short, it was a very emotional and rewarding experience.

That being said, I developed rhabdomyolysis during the race, a very serious condition that could have led to death. My symptoms were very intense muscle spasms starting in Mile 11. Even though I finished, it was not a very pleasant experience and my time was a full hour slower than I was hoping for.

Due to that health issue, I had to pull out of the NYC Marathon in November 2021. However, as I write this, I have been accepted to run the Boston Marathon again in April of 2022, and I also have my deferred entry to the NYC Marathon for November 2022. I’m hoping to complete at least one of those two races, and ideally in a way where I can do so without the debilitating injury that made the last time a less-than-ideal experience.

How to ensure that? I am going to be a little more deliberate in my training and work with a professional coach. Although the mere accomplishment was exciting, I want to experience the same euphoria with a fraction of the pain.

Exceed Professional Goals

I’m really grateful to have recently been given a leadership role at Dvinci, a rapidly growing company that is trying to disrupt the solar industry. Of course, it’s exciting to be a leader and to help any SaaS company become a market leader. But doing so in the solar industry would be particularly rewarding given the ramifications and what is at stake currently with our planet. Solar is one of the most rapidly emerging markets in the United States and I feel be blessed to have stumbled my way into it.

My foray here is a bigger leadership opportunity than any I have been given in the past, based on the size of the company and its revenues. This means I will be asked to accomplish something I have not accomplished before. The challenge of doing something I have not done before is really stimulating and quite frankly is what was missing from the couple of opportunities I had prior to Dvinci and after Next Caller, where I was the sales leader for 7.5 years prior to their acquisition in March of 2021.

If I am successful in helping my team to exceed its goals in 2022, we will be on a pace unlike anything anyone has ever seen before in solar. If that doesn’t get you out of bed, I am not sure what does!