Heading to Valentine's Day

It is hard to believe that January has gone and we are well into February. Been a while too since my last post and I am struggling to find a positive spin to what is going on. Here goes in no particular order:

• Had a great training ride for Cycle Around Australia 2013. We drove down from Sydney to Bairnsdale for the start. Its a long drive made a little longer by ignoring the GPS not far out of Cooma. the price was a ride down the Bonang highway which has a sign near the start saying winding road for 105 kms. Was a great road but a hard drive. Was great to meet a few new faces and the long time friends in the campsite. Cycled from Bairnsdale towards Omeo - would have been a great ride but for the heat with 48C on the road. I surrendered to the sag wagon at 104kms some 14 kms short of target and one big hill not ridden. Happy with that as it was my first ride over 100 kms in over a year. Next day was hoto too and very windy and I could only make 25kms of the road up to Mt Hotham. We stayed in a ski lodge there - unique in the summer. Ride down to Bright the next day was great - mostly downhill and some great descending opportunities. Great weekend. On the ride itself, it is all systems go with 15 riders signed up and fully paid to depart Melbourne on March 23. Blog can be found at Melbourne to Cairns. We will be supporting Freedom Wheels programme as our charity - it provides modified bikes to help disabled kids to get riding. Our cause link can be found at Freedom Wheels
• At home life has a few twists and turns, some good and some bad. My mother (aged 88) had a fall which she chose not to tell us about. All was well for a few days and then one morning (the day I called her) she could not walk. My sister-in-law organized for her to go to hospital where she stayed for a few days. My sister flew out from UK to stay with her. Now we are exploring options for in house care while we wait for an opening in a nearby retirement village. We shall see what transpires - all a bit worrying but thank heavens for family. 
• My soon-to-be-18 daughter headed off to Canberra this weekend to commence her university life at Australian National University. She has decided to enroll for a PPE program (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) - the first time it is offered and a small programme with only 30 spaces. While she does not live at home with me it is a bit of a wrench.  Also good to see her brother sign up to drive her down there - as part of his learner driver training. By all reports she has settled in and met a few new people which she is happy with.
• It has been a week since finishing the Industry Rockstar Intensive course run by Jeff & Kane I signed up for a few months ago. This was a 4 day training session designed for consultants and coaches to ramp their businesses up into more of a speaker platform driven business - essentially to go from a 1 to 1 client model to a 1 to many coaching model. And once one gets the one to many model working with strong demand, one can increase the rates charged for one to one coaching and consulting. I must say I was a little skeptical as the model seemed very focused on the consultant model - and I spent 25 years doing that and was not keen to go back to it. The selling grind of that business just killed me. What became clear during the sessions (we did a lot of group coaching) was that I have a huge reservoir of experience and a unique ability to help other people solve their challenges. It was great to be able to help and enjoy people grow in my hands. I came out of there with a lot more focus and will apply that to my own internet businesses. I was lucky enough to win 3 training programmes - one on strategy ; one on marketing and one on technology delivery - and I bought into the Industry Rockstar Trainers course. This has produced some bi timetable pressures - that might be a good thing. The course is definitely worth it and if you get a chance to go to a preview event you will be doing well.
• I came out of that training quite motivated and more focused.  Instead of getting to work on that I slid back into doing what I have been doing for ages. And I am back to wrestling with the depression demons on and off - they have been building since coming back from the training ride. Have found it very difficult to focus. I did set up to do two tasks last week one of which was to set up the charity pages for the Cycle Around Australia website. Got that done. The other one did not happen. Did not do any riding either. Relationship pressures are not helping as Lorraine and I struggle to undo the old behaviours we exhibit. Big lesson - new relationship means time to leave old behaviours at the door. the black dog can growl at them.
• And then there are the markets. Have spent a lot of time on these - my personal portfolio has now been transferred across. Only took 3 and a half months. It would have been faster in  the old postal days. January was interesting - we were expecting some consolidation on the JPY pairs and on the EUR and many people got caught when the consolidation did not happen. For example of the 4 FX portfolios I have. My active one lost 3.5%; my outsourced one lost 4.1%; my robot one gained 4.3% and my FX options almost doubled. It tells me quite firmly that I am better off working out macro trends and positioning myself for those. And stock markets went up in the big rally - well positioned for all of that. For the next few months the focus is on positioning for the great rotation as investors discover that yields are lower than inflation.