2022 Year In Review

Here's what I got done in 2022:

Moved to Texas

In December 2021 I made a snap decision to finally move the family to Texas. I don't recall what the final straw was, but the accumulated grievances I had against California became too great, so we pulled the plug and moved.

I had just taken another job that was not intended to be remote, so this caused a bit of stress.

The property closed in January, and I made my first trip driving out my beater car along with some fragile cargo to the house. To my surprise, I found that the gas and power had already been turned off. Getting the power back on was handled quickly, but I had to manage with a space heater in the middle of (mild) North Texas winter for a couple days.

I flew back to Santa Clara, packed a 16-foot shipping container with most of my belongings, and flew back together with the rest of the family. I unloaded the shipping container once it arrived, then flew back to Santa Clara.

Rented the family home

In Santa Clara I continued to work remotely while working on loading additional belongings into another 8-foot shipping container. I then drove a second vehicle, packed full, back to Texas.

I unloaded that container and flew back a third time to Santa Clara. I spent approximately two months getting the house ready for rental and discarding the few remaining belongings that I couldn't pack in the remaining car.

After arranging for property management, I gave up on the belongings that remained, packed what I could in the car and said farewell to California.

Round tripped jobs

During this time I decided the position I was in wasn't working out, so I resigned. I took a month off between jobs before boomeranging back to a previous company to get health insurance coverage. This ended up being good timing, since hiring freezes went off 2 weeks after I had started.

My career had stalled - there was little if any opportunity for advancement within the organization I joined, and beside that leaving and coming back reset most of my progress towards chasing another promotion. So I took my foot off the gas and focused on staying in maintenance mode for the remainder of the year.

Did a little tradin'

I traded stock most of the year for a few hours in the morning most days the market was open. I took a 5 month break in the middle of the year, came back in the third quarter and closed the year up over 100%.

For the last five years I've posted progressively larger trading gains. This year I made more from trading than my real "job". It's a bit encouraging to learn a bit about the game and have something to show for it.

Welcomed a new family member

It's great. Babies are wonderful. Thoroughly recommend.

Took paternity leave

Since work is a bit hard to manage with a child, I took (paid) leave, which will expire soon. I'll have to return to work if I still want the steady paycheck and health insurance.

Looking ahead

I feel like I had to give up a lot of things to gain something last year. I'm confident that I made good trades.

Let's all get more of what we want this year.