This roller coaster of a year comes to a conclusion in the next couple of days. What a life-changing, perspective-altering, transformational year it's been.

Let's start with the work picture, which I've been asked about many times but have been reluctant to address. There is no doubt that the things that happened this year for me professionally have altered my perspective tremendously on a number of fronts.

I worked for a real estate development company here in Nashville since 2005. This company gave me a number of great opportunities to learn and gain valuable experience. However, this company did not give me an opportunity to rise up through the organizational chart, and certainly did not give me the compensation increase or the new position I felt like I deserved in the aftermath of playing a critical role in saving a red-lining company project.

There are many great people who still work at my previous employer. I can't bring myself to say a lot of bad things about the organization which gave me my first job out of school, and a lot of valuable experience.

Needless to say, I was shaped by many things that happened during my time at this company, especially the things that happened at the end.

I came to the realization very early this year that my time at this organization had run out, and that I had no hope of moving up through the ranks no matter how hard I worked. Once I realized that, my notice to resign came quickly thereafter, in March. Well, I failed to recognize the danger this put my immediate boss in, since he had already had another key member of his team leave just months earlier. I had agreed to stay around til May to help my other boss with a final project, but that was not to be...

My main boss engineered a way to turn a minor mistake of mine into a vast conspiracy theory where I gave a contract away in return for a job offer, and boom! I was fired on April 1, 2009...April Fool's Day, no less.

No celebratory going-away dinner. No chance to wrap up loose ends. No chance to finally be recognized for all those things I had accomplished for my company over the years.

Instead, the company considered me such an outcast that I got physically escorted out of the building. I mean, I still can't wrap my head around that.

I felt sorry for myself for a while, until I heard the news that the organization had fired a good friend of mine there who I knew was one of the most loyal employees the company ever had. I knew then that the company was destined for complete and unmitigated disaster.

Sure enough, just over a month later, there were mass layoffs, and to this day the company has not fixed some of their most glaring problems.

This year's sequence of events involving my previous company made me realize I need to stop making excuses and start living the life I imagined for myself.

I always knew I wanted to start my own business. In fact, I had already done that years ago, by starting the iTest...but I had not fully embraced the entrepreneurial life yet and started any for-profit company. That changed in July when I started The Score.

All the ways I was wronged, both by individuals at my previous employer as well as the entire company itself, were quickly overshadowed by the joy of pursuing my dream. I have worked tirelessly to develop the business that is soon to open here in Cool Springs, the largest suburban commercial district here in Nashville.

Some of the things I observed at my previous employer have had a direct impact on how I run my own business. For me to go into those things would reveal a little too much. But certainly, I have learned many things about what NOT to do, as well as plenty of great pieces of advice from those people who were a positive influence in my life at my previous employer.

Some people wonder why I'm not angrier about what happened. How can I be angry, when I'm sitting where I am now? My previous employer has paid a king's ransom for its sins, and is likely going to continue to pay in 2009. I have no need to sit in judgment of them, when the free market is doing it for me.

Personally, Lori and I have big plans for this year. We've talked about having a child, and God willing, we'll do that in 2009. I'm sure I will chronicle plenty about that in this space in the coming months.

The iTest is about to expand to its next big subject, launching the iTest Debate in February 2009. The nonprofit may be close to another big deal to add some additional human resources to the mix as well, but we'l have to see. Big changes are in store for this amazing academic organization as we retool for the future and get ready to serve a much wider audience than we ever have before.

It's going to be a phenomenal 2009, and the only reason it will be so good is because 2008 was so challenging.

Time to move forward...not time to look back...as 2009 begins.