This weekend I celebrated my 39th birthday and took some time to reflect upon my life to remember the moments (both good and bad) that brought me to this point. I realize a lot of wonderful things can be packed into 39 years…a lot of smiles and a fair share of tears, yet I do not always take the time to appreciate the past. It took each of those experiences to bring me to this moment of excitement and happiness. I sit here today happily married to an amazing woman with the closest friends I ever had, and preparing to pursue a lifetime of dreams this year.

With this being such a big year for us I decided to write up a summary of my life since college. To make it interesting I have used Twitter as a guide and gave myself a limit of no more that 140 characters per year. By creating this list I was forced not only to remember each year and what I did, but also how to identify the most important events from the year. This is the result:

1993 – graduated from Texas A&M University, took my dream job at Toys R Us following my dream to live the life ofHoneymoon 027 Tom Hanks in “Big”
1994 – moved to Dallas; learned retail sucks (curse you Tom Hanks); joined Software Spectrum; got engaged (engagement #1)
1995 – learned I was an idiot; broke off engagement; sad times ensue
1996 – determined through much experimentation that single life was much better than anticipated; promoted to Supervisor
1997 – met a woman; moved to Seattle; joined Microsoft (yes, the Evil Empire)
1998 – I forgot I am an idiot & got engaged (again…#2)
1999 – got married to wife #1 (using numbers should be a clue); honeymoon in Germany; left Microsoft, founded a company (cMeRun) & raised $15M; got my best friend (my dog Max)
2000 – moved to Boston; took company public; found out it snows a lot here
2001 – closed company; investors in jail (great story available for years to come); moved to Washington DC area
2002 – joined a company as CEO; moved to East Philadelphia (aka New Jersey)
2003 – sold company; got divorced; met amazing woman (Betsy); still living in East Philly (yes, it is still NJ)
2004 – got married (yes, again); honeymoon in Paris; moved to Boston (yes, again) Last day in Telluride 038
2005 – loving New England; became a Red Sox fan; went to Germany & UK
2006 – moved to Seattle; joined F5; went to Barcelona for vacation
2007 – enjoying wine and living in the city of Seattle; spent the holidays in San Francisco
2008 – launched Married with Luggage; joined Microsoft (again); vacation in Hawaii; started learning Spanish; traveled to Singapore and Indonesia
2009 – went to NFL Pro Bowl in Hawaii; started a WordPress development company (MWL Development); promoted to Director at Microsoft
2010 – sold our home and everything we own; sky-dived for the 1st time; counting down to trip around the world on Oct 1st…
Honestly, I could not imagine being happier with the path my life has taken and the peaks and valleys I have gone through to reach this moment. I cannot wait to see what my 40’s have to offer.

none of that is true lol