2019 was quite the year…
After nearly 38 years of wearing glasses, I got ICL interplantable contact lens surgery, which has fixed my eyes from blind as a bat to seeing 20/15. Words cannot express the freedom I feel from not being tied to glasses or contacts. Having always worn clunky thick glasses, I am grateful for my surgeon Dr. Maloney, for giving me freedom from an insecurity that has plagued me most of my life.
My cousin Eric and I flew out to New York for the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, which included our favorite band The Cure, along with Def Leppard, Stevie Nicks (and Don Henley), Radiohead, Roxy Music, The Zombies and Janet Jackson. It was an incredible experience that I will treasure forever. In November, my sister Kelley joined me in Cleveland for a VIP launch party of a new exhibit at the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame, which allowed us to see Don Felder of the Eagles, Rob and Kirk of Metallica and Nancy Wilson from Heart, as well as a 3-hour private tour.
My corporate job kept me quite busy as our architectural technical sales team was led to another year of double-digit growth, with one of our 5 brands reaching a record $104 million. Acuity Brands now has 40 different companies, as we recently acquired 7 more companies reaching $3.7billion in revenue. Work had me traveling to Atlanta (5x), Seattle (2x), Calgary, Denver, Portland, Salt Lake City and Billings, Montana. I am grateful that I still work from home, which is a huge benefit for us. I’m still teaching college business after 13 years – both undergrad and MBA.
I have been doing a lot of reading and finished my 30th book of the year, which has enlightened me across a variety of topics from leadership, high performance, sales and marketing, storytelling, habits, etc. I also completed SuperBrain training with Jim Kwik/Mindvalley as my goal is to read 52 books/year. Link to the 30 books I read in 2019.
We were super happy to have my friend John and his son Ethan drive down from outside of Seattle and come visit us in May, where we took Liam to his first Angels baseball game.
We spent the 4th of July (and my birthday on the 5th) up in Big Bear Lake, where we rented a cozy little cabin. We all got new hiking boots, backpacks, etc. to start our adventures of being out in nature more. Liam was able to hike up to around 7500’, and probably could have gone further but we didn’t want to have to carry him down the mountain.
In August, my mom and sister Kelley came out to visit us. We rented a house in downtown Santa Barbara and enjoyed the ocean breeze while drinking lots of wine. I rented an awesome 1920’s house filled with antiques, taking us back in time.
Liam is doing awesome and growing up way too fast – just turned 4 in August. He’s in private school (pre-k) from 8:30am-3:15pm daily and is excelling at everything. He’s ridiculously smart and his teachers think he’s an angel – very kind and respectful. He’s been active with soccer, gymnastics and most recently finished a 6-week piano class. His teacher was amazed at how he feels the rhythm so naturally. We’re hoping to keep him going with music classes, and especially now as we just got Cathy a keyboard to learn on as well. We took him to Disneyland, Pirate Adventures and Legoland… to which, he loves building legos. For his birthday, we had a Star Wars theme with Darth Vader and a jedi showing up to battle things out, and I dressed as a Stormtrooper to add in the fun. Watching my little rebel Liam display his pure genius every single day just fills my heart with joy… I just know one day that he’s going to change the world.
Giana is doing good and is finishing up her senior year at Cal State Northridge, studying communication studies. Next goal is to land a great marketing job.
Cathy is working on her pre-req’s and taking the CSET test for entry into earning her master’s degree at Cal State Fullerton, with a goal of being a teacher. I’m excited to see her make this career shift and know she’s going to do great and make a huge impact for students. I surprised her with a Lexus SUV just recently – a token of my appreciation for all she does for our family.
God bless each of you.
Love,
Geoff