Posted on by Steveark

2023


I haven’t posted anything on this site in quite awhile. My volunteer work consumed a lot of my free time last year and I think that’s why I was not motivated to write.
But it really was a monumental year for me and my family in a lot of ways. Lots of big projects. We built a new house! You might remember that my wife and I have ever only lived in the one house we still occupy. We’ve been in it for over 40 years. However we decided to buy or build a cabin in the Arkansas wilderness near the Buffalo National River. We spent months looking at available land and cabins and finally found a 25 acre tract that was perfect. Completely isolated and out of sight of any other dwellings but with water and electricity easily available and only ten minutes away from groceries and restaurants. It was a tremendously enjoyable project designing the house, watching it grow from a foundation to a finished, private retreat. Its perfect and we’ve already spent quite a bit of time up there. It was our first pass at building a house and we learned a lot.

On the volunteer side, I bought a hospital. That’s definitely a first for me! In truth I wasn’t the only person involved in the purchase and I didn’t spend my own money to buy it. Rather the foundation that I’m board chair of partnered with three other entities to form a nonprofit corporation to purchase and operate the hospital. Much of the money came from our foundation’s endowment. I’m now chairing the hospital board as well as the foundation and its been quite an experience for an engineer to absorb everything I need to know about health care. There have been countless meetings and decisions to make during 2023, at times it has felt like a full time job. Just without the pay. 2024 will be just as busy with much hospital related work to do.

I also am involved in our local college as the chair of its board of trustees. Our beloved college president chose to move to another college in our state for very sound family reasons. That was great for him, but not for me. I’m beginning my fourth presidential search in the 20 years I’ve been a trustee. It is a tedious but important task, which like the hospital work, will consume a lot of time in 2024.

My mentoring of chemical engineering students continued for the third year. I worked with some great mentors and the students were outstanding. It’s a fun way to give back to the university that gave me the tools to have a wonderful career. I also continue to work with the engineering department as an Academy member, donor and advisory board member.

Our son finished residency and became a full fledged credentialed attending physician in 2023 and we watched one of our daughters graduate with her PhD last month. We are very proud of all of our grown kids. Now if they’d just figure out how to produce a grandkid. With all that education surely they can figure out how that works?

We took our second adventure tour with Backroads. They have dozens of locations and activities all over the world and if you like to be physically active they know how to work that into a vacation tour. In our case we are avid hikers and we met our son in Patagonia to do a week long hiking tour. We saw massive glaciers, did some pretty intense hiking and had some great food.

We’ve always travelled economy or economy plus when we flew, but this one time I convinced my wife that we should go first class, now called business class. We had the full deal, with individual pods that felt like tiny hotel rooms with seats that converted into beds. Constant attention and unlimited wining and dining included. It was fun even if the two tickets cost as much as a pretty nice used car.


We did several multi-thousand mile road trips including out west to the Tetons and Great Basin National Park in Nevada and up north to the UP in Michigan. We did a cycling vacation in Virginia which included my favorite bike trail in the world. The Virginia Creeper, which goes downhill for the entire seventeen mile trail. That’s seventeen miles that you can coast without pedaling at all! It was luxurious cycling for sure.


2023 was a great year health wise. I had surgeries in each of the previous three years, not fun. Nothing where I had dire odds of survival, but still significant events that interrupted my tennis and hiking for weeks. But in 2023 I stayed away from the scalpel and was extremely active. Everything that was previously fixed has stayed fixed and that’s awesome because I’m not a happy camper when I can’t play my sports or go fishing.

It wasn’t all good. I lost two dear friends, a fishing buddy and athlete who dropped dead from a heart attack at 53 and a lady I had mentored for decades. I had encouraged and cheered her on as she rose from being an administrative assistant to getting a college degree and later becoming a corporate director of a multinational corporation. And she was a spouse approved platonic pal. I was so proud of her, and then cancer took her life just as she had achieved her career dreams. Both were quality friends that I’ll miss for the rest of my life.

My wife and I celebrated our 45 wedding anniversary in 2023. She might could have made a better pick of mates but I could not have. She’s been a great wife for all these years and any success I’ve had has come because I had a full and equal partner standing with me, no matter what the situation was. And her incredible child raising skills gave our kids a huge head start in life.

Life is good, and the only thing lacking is the knowledge that at 68, most of my time has already been spent. However, I’m a live in the moment guy and hope to stay that way until my very last moment. So far so good. I hope 2023 was a mostly good year for you too and offer you my best wishes for 2024.

How about you? Was 2023 a great, good or not so good year?

What do you think 2024 will bring into your life?

If you can’t find the comment box, click on the title of the post.

27 Replies to “2023”

  1. Hi Steve,
    Great hearing from you and if you ever make a trip through the Black Hills, please let me know. You can stay at the ranch apartment as long as you like.
    Again, great from you and that all is well.
    Semper FI,
    Luis

    1. Always great to hear from you Luis! I hope you had a great holiday season. That’s beautiful and rugged country up there, we enjoyed the time we were there though it has been years ago.

  2. 2023 was good! I too had no surgeries or major disease diagnosis either! I spent the year getting fully back to myself after a hysterectomy in 2022. So much more energy and brain power it’s quite stunning. We travelled a bit and did one flight in business class and holy cow a 10 hour flight is like no big deal after that. I missed hearing what you guys were up to. Now I know why! So much happened! Glad to have you back! Love hearing what you do in retirement. It helps me talk to my husband about him eventually retiring. We’re early 50’s but I think we’ll have to talk about it for 20 years before he does it.

    1. Thanks Stephanie, its good for both of us to recover and stay away from the knife! That pod life is pretty lux, I’m not sure what we’ll do next time. I kinda feel spoiled already. Retiring isn’t for everyone, I’ve got a bro-in-law that had to invent a job in retirement because he was bored. Boredom doesn’t happen to me so far. It is good to think and plan quite a while in advance. Thanks for commenting, its good to hear from you!

    1. This is more of a small two bedroom, two bathroom conventional build house. It has pretty big decks on three sides that we think we will use in the nonwinter months, right now its too cold! It has a metal roof and a good bit of glass. Thanks for asking.

  4. Great to see you on the keyboards again, Steve. Wow, what a year. Buying a hospital, building a second home, looking for a college President…you’re the busiest retiree I know! Thanks for the update, best wishes for a more sane 2024.

    1. I know, I should have been more diligent, Fritz. It was busy, and I ommitted about half of the stuff I was involved in last year. Just today I’ve had three meetings already and am headed to my 4th just now. College, hospital, foundation and one that’s secret for now. Thanks for the wishes!

  5. What I read besides the great year STeve is gratitude which is the cherry on top.
    Heres to 2024 and health and happiness

  6. It sounds like you had an excellent year, though I’m sorry you lost some good friends.
    2023 was the year I turned 60, which I celebrated by whisking myself off to a 5 week stay in England and Ireland, with the majority of the time spent staying with friends I’ve met on other trips. 🙂

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  11. Good to see you back, Steve!

    2023 was not so good for me but much better than 2022.

    And 2024… I’m at such a big crossroads right now. I’m at the point where I want to quit my job to try my hand at a venture but I also don’t want to quit my job because it’s a “guaranteed” way for me to become a millionaire in a couple of years’ time

    I’m so lost right now, Steve.. years feel like an eternity now.

    1. I’m sorry your path is not clear to you right now. That can be frustrating. I think often we see more risk than is really there, that most fears are not that rational. Its likely that you are just having to choose between two good options, that there is no wrong decision. As an old guy I can tell you that some day you’ll wish the years did not pass so fast, because you see your supply of them running low. Good luck my friend, I do not doubt you’ll be successful no matter what you decide.

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