Crazy last minute move. I shipped off 6 boxes through Canada Post with all my possessions. Threw away so much stuff from my apartment and flew off the next morning to live and work in a whole new country.

The weather here is hot! But I’m enjoying it. I’ve got a sweet 2013 Nissan Altima S rental car for a month. I’ve stayed at 2 AirBnB places so far and have met amazing hosts. My first host Michelle was amazing! She had the cutest pets and provided good company even after my stay at her place. Everyone I’ve met in Austin has been so friendly and welcoming. I’m tempted to say they’re even nicer than Canadians (gasp)! The southern hospitality is true.

My first day at work was great too. I was given a cabinet full Apple gear which included a fully loaded 15″ MacBook Pro retina with 16GB of ram. It’s a sweet machine and paired with 2 huge Dell thunderbolt monitors. The people are friendly at Dell and the campus is huge and multicultural which makes it feel closer to back home in Toronto. I’ve been given a lot of responsibility regarding the direction of the product we’re building and I am truly excited to be working on it.

In the midsts of all this I’m trying to handle all my paperwork, get a new phone plan, get a car, get a car loan, get a more permanent place, get a SSN, get a bank account, and get accustomed to a new city. It’s all been overwhelming and a lot of things are dependent on my SSN which will take weeks to process.

Anyways that’s my quick update!

So you know how public companies often give a forecast to guide investor expectations for the coming quarter or beyond? Wouldn’t it be cool to release your own personal forecast? Okay maybe it wouldn’t be that cool but it seemed cool to me.

A forecast would set expectations for yourself and set goals for you to achieve in the future. A forecast would act as a manifesto for yourself and to guide you to the path you want or the bar you want to reach. Since a quarter is a bit short, why not make it a 1 year forecast? So here’s my 1 year forecast.

Spiritual

As a child, attending Church has always just been the thing to do on Sunday. As much as everyone tried to encourage me to go I knew that although I was there physically, I was never there mentally. I knew that wasn’t the way to go. If I was going to attend Church, I wanted my heart and mind to be fully committed so I decided to stop going to Church altogether. Recently though I’ve embarked to do something I’ve been wanting to do and that is finish reading The Case for Christ.

It has convinced me enough to explore further into Christianity at the least. So I’ve dived into the deep end and in the coming year I want to tackle the second thing I’ve been meaning to do: read the bible from cover to cover. I don’t know where it will lead me but I hope to at least have a greater understanding of the bible and maybe convince myself enough to head back and attend a Church regularly.

Financial

My financial forecast is pretty straight-forward. I want to save about 40% of every pay cheque. According to my complex and well-tracked budgets, I am well on my way to achieve this if I keep things up. What can I say? I can be frugal if I want to be!

In addition to my base pay cheque, I also want to build in side income through my online ventures. My goal here is to build an online venture that will bring in at least $200/month in profit.

Work

I want to continue delivering the best work I can at SapientNitro with the hope of also building on some core strengths mainly with my OOP, testing, and data structure abilities.

Physical

This is a simple one. Go to the gym at least 2 times a week doing both strength and cardio.

Social