As I predicted last year, 2015 was jam-packed with awesome. Once again, the world around me tore itself apart in chaos and stupidity, but thankfully very little of it affected me. I felt very lucky to enjoy time with family, old friends, new friends, travel, baseball, design, biking, music, and work:
- This year was the first of two that I sat in the big President’s Chair for AIGA Santa Barbara, and that kind of overwhelmed everything else: 12 events for AIGA SB, 6 of which I produced or co-produced, 3 trips south for as many AIGA LA events, a trip to this year’s Leadership Conference in Grand Rapids, and a fun collaboration with AIGA NOLA for the October design conference.
- Em and I traveled to Denver to cross off stadium #14 on our DuBois Baseball Tour—the Rockies at Coors Field—and we also took in 2 shows (Avetts & Wilco) at Red Rocks for the first time. It was her first visit to Denver and my second (and third overall to Colorado).
- Those Red Rocks shows were two of seven concerts attended overall: two each by the War on Drugs (Ventura Theater, Greek Theater) and the Avett Brothers (Arlington Theater and Red Rocks), plus Wilco (Red Rocks), Built to Spill (Soho), and U2 (the Forum).
- In September I finally released my first new music in four years as a solo E.P., Rotten Miracles. I also created all the album art and am expecting a short run of CDs to complement the mp3/digital release. They’re only demos, but for a little while they were a big deal.
- In August I got to do the 20-year-high-school-reunion thing and it was much better than the 10th (which itself wasn’t that bad either).
- I hung in there at Oniracom for a bumpy-but-successful transition to my new position as Design & Content Strategist.
- I kicked ass on 64 bike rides for about 917 total miles—well above the totals for 2014 and 2013—including another 30-mile ride around Ventura’s perimeter and a two-ride, 60+ mile trip to Santa Barbara and back.
- I once again got to warp some young creative minds at SBCC thanks to my AIGA SB BFF Jennie Jacobs.
- I had fun with illustration projects like “Sketch-a-Thon” and “Design a Song.”
Like last year, I also spent too much money on vinyl and spent too much time in traffic on 101, but on balance it was a great year. In the coming year I’m planning more AIGA stuff (including a trip to North Carolina), and maybe the baseball tour will take us to Atlanta. Other than that, I have no idea what to expect for 2016, but I’ll be turning 40 in November, so maybe a mid-life crisis party can happen.
