Nathan’s Christmas 2003 Letter

G’Day!

I bet your wondering what this letter is within your Christmas card. Well I thought I would start a new tradition for myself, a Christmas letter that updates friends and family on what I have done for the past year.

Yes I hear some of you saying, “Nathan never sends Christmas Cards let alone a Christmas Letter!”. Well if you will read on lots of things have changed in my life so different things have become more important to me.

Also I cannot lay claim to this idea. I ripped it off from Ann McDonald, an old friend of my mothers who does this every year (so Mum you better make sure this filters to her somehow!).

If your wondering how you got on the list, well it is because you are either family or friend. If your wondering how to get off my list, well tough luck, once you are on it that’s it! Unless I have a computer meltdown, and lose my list, your stuck with me (and I back-up things properly now too!).

So without further ado, here it is;

The Inaugural Nathan Allan Christmas Letter

The year started well enough, my parents and sister were in Des Moines with Karissa, Hayden and I, and we had a great Christmas 2002. Although I knew Karissa and I had issues and problems, I also knew there were other factors that made us not totally comfortable in Des Moines and with our lives in general.

We took my family to visit the in-laws in Kentucky and along the way stopped at the Arch in St Louis, Missouri and Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee. At the end of January my family went home to Australia and the next day I followed.

I went for a number of reasons. To give Karissa some space, to speak at a conference in Sydney and to resolve some issues in my company, Sausage Software.

The conference went amazing, and speaker feedback rated me as high as the keynote speaker. Not bad for a bloke who doesn’t like public speaking. The problems with Sausage ran deeper than I thought, and I found my partners were not really holding up their end of the bargain. They were either out of their depth or incapable of performing at the levels needed to achieve success.

Now let me get into the Sausage issue a little deeper, as this has become a pivotal point in my life, and an issue that is still not resolved. When we purchased Sausage from the SMS monolith that had run it into the ground, our goals were humble. Service the customer base, provide quality software, and add some complimentary services for our customers. Unfortunately our programmers could not provide the software in a timely manner and we got into some financial difficulties. I organized a bail-out by a US based investor, however with my partners unable to follow simple directions the investment has been neither quick or easy as first proposed. With me personally having every last dollar in the venture and that of a number of good friends and family, this has caused stress to no end! However it will work out, the route we are using now is just taking so much more time than anyone ever imagined.

I returned to Des Moines, rejuvenated and changed. I had recommitted myself to my family. To the point that I was happy to do anything to make life easier. I was prepared to give up my role in Sausage and get back to a 9 to 5 slog. Three days later everything changed.

Karissa told me she was divorcing me. For a couple of months I was devastated. I had lost Karissa and Hayden. In what was suppose to be an amicable divorce I was somewhat stupid and left saddled with a lot of the debt we had acquired during the marriage. At the same time I let Karissa keep everything to make it easier for her and Hayden.

Now my only concern is Hayden. Although she is not biologically mine, I have always considered her my daughter and that will never change. I did not fight for custody or visiting rights as Karissa told me we would work that out (plus not being the biological father had me believing I had no rights anyway), however Karissa does not let me have contact with her regularly. I send Hayden letters and the like every couple of weeks and have been told she loves hearing from me. I have been allowed to talk to her on the phone a handful of times. By the way they moved back to Kentucky after the house sold in Des Moines. I am lucky enough to be going to visit Hayden the week before Christmas, which is the best Christmas present ever.

So let me get to the up-beat part of the year. My wonderful father came back out here in April and helped me drive across the country to Seattle Washington. Why here? Well because the investor for Sausage is here plus my amazing friend Eric Bass offered me a place to stay while I got back on my feet.

My Dad was out here for just on three weeks. I was still really depressed and upset about the divorce. The only upside was I lost a lot of weight. I got down to what I weighed as a teenager I think. It was really sad to see my Dad go home, however I had decided to stay here to be close to Hayden (incase I was allowed access) and I needed to see the Sausage thing through to completion.

I decided I needed to get out and meet people. Eric and his friend Janice were, and still are, amazingly good to me, however I needed to get out a bit and get a new zest for life. So I decided to meet a girl that shared a common interest that I had, kayaking. Casey is her name and we have now been seeing each other for eight months. In the beginning I warned her off me, as I had just gone through the divorce and was not sure if I should be dating anyone. She wouldn’t hear it so we kept seeing each other. When it comes down to it she is like a gift from god, at some of my lowest points she was there to support me. Now I wouldn’t call myself a religious person however it was a big coincidence that we found each other when we did.

Things have moved along very quickly with Casey. She is wonderful. She is intelligent and good-looking to boot. We share a lot of the same dreams, and hopefully we can make some of them come true together. We are in no rush to get married or anything like that, but we do have a lot of plans (Hopefully that keeps my cousin Samantha off my back when it comes to making babies).

Casey and I have already had a couple of great adventures together. The first was a camping and hiking trip to the Sol Duc Springs in the Olympic State Park. The second was an even better trip, kayaking around the San Juan Islands for four days and three nights. More importantly this is where we saw a ‘land for sale‘ sign on an island we kayaked past. This sparked an old dream in to reality, that of owning a Bed and Breakfast.

Over the past few months we have both researched and planned to buy land on Decatur Island and build a home that will double as a Bed and Breakfast. We have a name for it already, Island Time Retreat. We have basic plans picked out from Lindal homes, we are basing it off the Greenbriar at the moment, but it will be twice as big and probably have another wing. We plan on doing a lot of the building ourselves.

A horrible thing happened towards the end of November. I turned 30. Really it isn’t so bad at all! Casey took me on a surprise weekend I will never forget. We stayed in a tree house, 50 feet up a cedar tree! (www.cedarcreektreehouse.com) It was a first for the owner who had never had someone stay in there with all the snow on the ground.

Another highpoint was getting my Miata. That is a Mazda MX5 for you Aussies reading this. An early midlife crisis this is not! (By the way midlife is 50 for me, I intend to live to at least 100) I joined the Puget Sound Miata Club (www.ps-miata.org) and started driving in parades and the like. My friend Eric who has a Miata as well got me hooked on the idea. Realistically it was a cheap replacement for the SUV I was lumped with after the divorce. I sold the Suzuki XL7 privately but didn’t make a dime on it.

Oh boy! I am up to my fourth page so I better wind it up just about here. A few quick plans for 2004 first. That way I can report on what happened next year.

1. Buy land on island
2. Build B+B
3. Go to Australia with Casey in April or May
4. Sell or renovate warehouse shell in Abbortsford
5. Take NetBloke.com to the next level!
6. Get Thinkers.com Hosting and Domains profitable
7. Get closure on Sausage
8. Travel as much as possible
9. Enjoy life!

There we go. That was my first Christmas letter. I hope you and your loved ones all have a happy holiday season. Be happy, safe and may you prosper in 2004!

With Love and Best Wishes,

Nathan