How was your year in 2023?

1SlowVW said:

3/10 worst year of my adult life by a long shot. 2024 will be better. 

I think I agree that since I turned 18 31 years ago last year was the suckiest. Taking 7 months to heal from a simple bone break, killing an entire summer of activities, a job that while the pay is fine is soulless and feels like its killing me inside. Fighting with insurance to actually get the prescriptions my physicians have prescribed to make me a little less sucky is still ongoing. 

Probably 7 or 8/10? :

Got another costume approved on Xmas day.

Concrete mailbox destroyed by a Honda Civic (destroyed his car too)

Dentures in Octboer

944 turbo in March

Played being in charge of Dayton area in my Star Wars group (ready to hand that off to the next)

Made a handful of AX events.

SWMBO and I still strong, mom still kicking, pets are good.

Meh.

The fiance spent about 7-8 months of the year laid off and out of work, didn't help the finances. She got what seems to be a good, stable job toward the end of the year which should allow us to quickly get back on top of things. 

I made a big mistake on a big project, I had already been thinking about leaving. I think that solidifies that I likely won't ever be getting promoted/etc here, so I might as well move on.

IDK, i'd have to say that 2023 was pretty OK for me. it may not have felt like it on a daily basis, but i'm still punching life in the face and taking it's lunch money.

Sorry to hear others had such a bad year. The hardest thing is accepting reality and having to press forward and move on instead of sulking in our woes.

2023 was one of the worst years of my adult life as well. It was also great in other aspects as well. It gets a 5/10 simply because I'm not going to let the actions of some monster(s) trump or ruin the memories and times I spent with my kids that were amazing. Despite having my life turned upside down by a long time girlfriend and my ex-wife trying to put the biggest wedge she can between my kids and I, we had an amazing year. I took them to Washington and Oregon. We went to the Goonies house, hiked a few trails at Mt. Rainer, they went swimming in an Alpine lake, we found starfish at Cannon Beach, jumped off a cliff into a freezing cold river, etc. We also went to the Keys for a week, the Everglades, and Biscayne NP. I took them swimming with Manatees and a couple nights on Clearwater Beach for Spring Break. Did a few staycations at Universal Orlando in some of their resort hotels. And a few UCF football games. 

Also I did that whole 10k mile road trip across the Western US after homegirl kicked me out. Despite me being a miserable see you next Tuesday because of my emotions, it was one of the most absolute amazing road trips I've ever taken and the sites and serenity found on that trip, well I would have never gotten to do that had she not done what she did. 

And to top it all off on the last day of the year, I set my fastest time ever at Sebring in my Champcar Accord by almost 2 seconds. 

wvumtnbkr said:

7.5/10...

 

Pretty good.  

 

Highlights:

Race win at NCM 

First GRM challenge

Sold the racecar!

Blew up the challenge car (only negative)

First time I didn't get ANYTHING for Christmas from anyone (that's a yuuugggeee win).

 

See yall in 2024.

You forgot about racing Daytona with me!!!!  Nevermind, you can leave that out.

Let's see:  #7 was born, everyone else is doing great, raced at Daytona with my dad, FIL, and some random guy from car forums (hey Rob!), new responsibilities at work...all pretty good.  Had some other things that occurred that really screwed up half the year with one side of the family...tension is still there and will be for a while.  

7 is an important number to me and quite relevant to last year, so we'll go with 7/10.  The good far outweighed the bad.  

Life was life. It has been good. 
 

I'm going with 10/10. While there were some ups and downs, I chose to concentrate on the ups. 

To start, business was booming all year. Just as we would get caught up, the work would pile in and we would be scrambling to catch up. While there is some stress in that, it's a better stress than no business. I started the year with 5 employees and finished the year with 7 so the company is growing. The people who work for me are great to work with. I can't ask for more. 

In January my siblings and I bought a farm in the mountains as vacation/retirement property. That was fun and it's a beautiful place to spend weekends and weeks when the temps down on the coast are 95 degrees plus. I spent a fair amount of time up there this year sitting beside the stream that runs through it. It's a great place to unwind. 

My siblings are all healthy and successful in their lives. They are great people to hang out with as are their spouses.

My parents are healthy and at 84 that makes for a good thing in itself. They spent a good bit of time at the mountain farm as well. I think the heat gets to them worse than it used to. Having a place where they can get away from the heat without hauling their camper to Canada is a good thing. 

My Daughter bought her first house with zero help from the Bank of Dad. It's a nice house, 3br, 1 bath, and about 1100 sqft. with a huge yard. Perfect for a single woman who works from home. She has been super happy about the move. Her company keeps promoting her and paying her more. If she stays on track I fully expect to see her as a senior manager or VP in the future. 

My eldest son is stepping up at work and assuming the responsibility I need him to. The plan is for him to buy me out in 8-10 years and that plan is moving forward nicely. His kids are achievers who put forth 100%. His eldest just sat down with West Point about going there for college. The other two have received several awards for excellence including recognition by the BSA and the National Park Service. They are all great kids who will be assets to society instead of burdens wondering where their next handout is or why life isn't fair.  

My other two sons have good jobs and plans for the future.

The middle son is engaged to his long time girlfriend and is the leading contender for an open shift management position at the hospital he works for. It's a step in the direction he wants to move. He's 24.

The youngest has come to work for me and is showing the maturity of an adult. He and his brother are already planning for the future of the business. He has put forth significant effort to fill the shoes of one of the install techs who left the company in December. I put him in charge of installing about $200k worth of materials at a hospital and he is getting the job done professionally. He's detail-oriented and works well with the other contractors which can be difficult at times. He's 19. 

The Good Lord has been pretty good to me and mine. So yeah, I'm going with a 10.

5/10

I spent almost the entire year on a job assignment away from home.  So financially I did well during 2023.  Hobbies and personal life - almost zero.  Ended the year with pretty much every hobby vehicle broken in some way.  Didn't get to ride bikes as much as I wanted to thanks to crap weather. Gained too much weight. 

High-light of the year was a ~4000 mile, 10-day trip to San Antonia TX to pick up a T-9 transmission kit for my Spitfire, stopping in AR and NC to ride mtn bike trails I'd only seen in videos along with checking a lot of "states I've visited" off the list. That was fun, although once again - weather had a negative impact. It also reinforced my desire to build a camper-van.  Hotels suck. 

So far, 2024 should have me home more often, so hopefully I can make some forward progress on the cars along with getting more riding in. 

I don't think years are bad or good. Being alive is an inherently good blessing and the years are what you make of them. 2019 was probably my worst year with the divorce etc, yet some of my favorite memories are from it, like winning the $2000 Challenge.

On the first day of 2023, my fiance and I looked at yet another house after months of searching. We closed by the end of the month, with an astronomically high interest rate. Yikes, but also we're just grateful to finally be homeowners again and start our lives together.

Then a month after moving in, we had to dig up and replace a collapsed sewer line while I left for a work trip on another continent. Stressful and expensive, but I got the chance to visit an African wildlife preserve and see all the big critters.

In May I fulfilled a GRM dream by bringing the Free Europa to the Challenge, and what a blast that weekend was! And that build was a perfect opportunity to learn fiberglass skills, which was really fun for me despite the itches and smells.

In November we had our wedding, and SVreX's daughter in law just happened to be our photographer - small world! Unfortunately we had to postpone our honeymoon due to civic unrest in Panama. Hoping to start 2024 by re-booking that trip. 

2024 I plan to build a proper detached garage workshop. I think it's in our cards, just have to make it happen. Maybe start a new project car, and maybe finish a few old ones (haha).

SV reX said:

Divorce, a tornado destroyed my house,  my tool trailer was stolen, lost 2 family members, and I blew the engine in my truck. That was January. 
 

The rest of the year got a little better. 

God I hope so!!

Meh, 5 or 6/10.  Fixed a part of my roof that leaked, doing the whole roof this spring; my mother passed away, now doing the 7 way split with my brothers and sister , got a coolass car project.  The Honey-Do list for this spring is impressively long should I decide to look at it .....

Started 3/10 - focused on work frustration

Ended 8/10 - focused on my relationship with my wife, and it's the best it's ever been.

Hoping next year will be 9/10

Opened with major issues and frustrations at work. Anxiety attack and literally passed out at a company cabin trip. Over time developed a healthier relationship with work. Frustrations still exist, but I've adopted a much healthier mindset of: "This is the owner's responsibility, not mine. If he's not concerned, I'm not. He's still paying me, and I'm handling my responsibilities."

My relationship with my wife is the best it's ever been. We decided to make our relationship our #1 priority, and its been great. We are having a lot of fun. Communicating, sharing, experimenting, and playing. Also finally got married for real after 18 years together.

Only things really dragging it down from a 9/10 are minor injury frustrations and slow healing preventing me from making the progress with climbing, lifting, and skating that I'd like to be doing.

Things are trending upwards into 2023, and I hope that trajectory continues.

2023 was primarily spent digging out from a rough 2022. Devoted tons of time, effort and money to laying the foundation for the future. Didn't make as much progress as hoped, but still on a strong trajectory. Stayed healthy. Relationships and family are strong. Job is stable. 8.5/10

Lots of good, with lots of bad in 2023. 

The Good:
-Actually went on vacation for the first time in over a decade, and it was glorious
-Broke ground on a complete house renovation
-Spent a lot of quality time with family
-Achieved true stability at the day gig

The Bad:
-Had some major stuff go on at said day gig that was less than good, but got through it
-House renovation turned into a complete knock down and rebuild
-Moved to a really small apartment which is less than ideal
-Paying a mortgage AND rent is also less than ideal
-Little to no wrenching due to the house project (had one thrash session on the truck out of necessity)
-Did very little car-related things at all (I went to one car show and helped a friend pick up a new project)
-Major family drama
-Lost my favorite aunt right before Christmas

I'd say it was a 5/10 for me. Hoping 2024 will be better. 

In reply to Beer Baron :

That is an incredibly happy and healthy post for me to read. 

Looking good GRM family.  I expected more of this. 
 

I spent an entire year fighting a mystery neurological thing that I JUST got an answer for today. 

I FINALLY live in a home that shares no walls with any other humans other than the one I am choosing to share them with. I have a yard and everything. 

I made a decision to take control of my own health for the firs time in my adult life. Probably should have done it earlier than my mid 40s, but here we are. 

I've gotten enough kudos on a few things I've done for the laughs that I'm beginning to think someone might pay me to do them. In fact, someone tried to- and I refused because I'm awful at deadlines. 

Largely I've focused on eliminating negative influence in my life. If that means you see less of me here......

Overall, not so bad. 

With 2020 as a "0" on my scale of 1-10, I would give 23 a "1". 24 is hopefully going to be much better. At least I'll have a job again (start back up at the state on the 16th).

2020 was just OK. It wasn't terrible or great. Work didn't change much because we were essential. Margins got thin. We were working 25-30 hours a week and paying everyone for 40. We decided to keep everyone on the payroll for as long as possible, paying them out of pocket, so our reserves took a pretty good hit. I spent a lot of time in hospitals in COVID wards so I tended to stay away from everyone. I missed hanging out with the family but for me, life didn't change much. Go to work, do the job, go home. Parts of it were pretty stressful. Worry about my parents, worry about keeping everyone paid, and worry about dwindling reserves. But I've done broke before and broke doesn't worry me too much. I'd give it a 6-7/10. 

2021 was a repeat of 2020 but less so. As the year progressed, life started returning to normal. Work gradually started picking back up. The entire family got COVID, including my then 82-year-old parents. It ended up being a non-event for everyone except a 90-year-old cousin who was in an assisted living facility with lung issues from 60 years of smoking. My business partner started making noises about retiring. The stress of COVID really got to him. So I started working toward that goal. I'd say 2021 was an 8+. 

2022 started out a little scary. I handed my business partner a check, threw him a party, and on January 1st I took over. There were some things I never could talk my business partner into so I made some pretty major changes right out of the gate. I started with fairly significant pay raises for everyone on the team. The company had come out of COVID about $125k in debt so I went hard in on debt reduction which required a fairly significant pay cut for me. I also expanded into manual doors and hardware. We have always been the preferred automatic door service provider but when we started into manual doors, I caught it just at the right time. Several other regional vendors had reduced their workforce during COVID and couldn't keep up with their workload. I had managed to keep everyone employed, so I still had a full team and we pretty much took over the market. The workload increased significantly and suddenly, I was looking for people too. I was able to clear all the debt so I ended 2022 debt free. By the end of it, we were up about 30%. It ended up being an excellent year. A 10/10.

Pretty much getting to the goal stated by my signature.  So 8/10

I'll go with a 7/10 total. But overall it was a year of 2 halves. The first half was not that great. Got into a job that was soul sucking to me and not as advertised and was just burned out from the stress of worrying if I would make it through the year employed. That and my favorite uncle died and was sad about losing another family member. It just spread to a lot of not goodness

Then august came and I'm on a strong run of good luck. The ex got remarried so the alimony stopped. I found a new job with a team and boss I really enjoy working with. I found a great woman to come into my life that we love to spend time together. We go to the gym together regularly. I got the bugs worked out of track car and was out on track a few times. My nephew and I are spending a ton of time together as well and he is growing as a car guy. 

I'm in the best mental space that I have been in for a long time. So I'm thinking that 2024 will be my best year since 2016. 

Exhausting,3.5/10.  There were some very high points, but work and an endless parade of E36 M3 going wrong at home make it difficult to enjoy day to day life. I'm not sure what I can change, but I have to figure something out.  

I've had Covid every day of 2024 (tested positive about noon on New Year's Day), but so far, I'm already having a better year than last year. 

2023 was a solid 7/10. 

It wasn't a perfect year, but it set up to make 2024 something really good.