It’s now 2016 and this is a year of change for me. Starting on January 18th I’ll officially have left the glamorous world of finance, and be entering the Mountain Dew Code Red-fuelled world of technology as the Social Media Director of Mobile Nations (parent company of iMore, Android Central, Windows Central, and Crackberry).

Now that I’ve left the over-regulated financial services gig my social media muzzle is off. What does that mean? That means that I can spew whatever life musings I have to say on any media I want to say it on: lucky you!

With that said, I’ve created this website for several reasons:

1.  To act as a landing page from which you can be shipped off to all the different venues I put out content online.
2. A homepage from which I can be contacted.
3. Finally, as a place where I can spout off long form content about whatever I damn well please.

The first two items above need no clarification, just kick back and let your eyeballs feast on the visually-delicious social media content I put out on all the mediums I link out to, and if you want to reach me for any reason just hit the “Contact” button that I’ll be (hopefully) building on the main page.

The last item from above might deserve a little more context.  Here are some off the cuff thoughts about what and why I’ll be posting here:

1. Having gradually lost my passion for finance and subsequently followed my passions for endurance sports and social media, I learned (and am still learning) a lot about the process of finding a more fulfilling ways to spend your 9-5 life.
2. I believe that anyone -read that literally as ANY-EFFIN-ONE- can make a living (albeit some livings will be better than others) pursuing their passions as opposed to following the standard “get job>work at job>get promotions>save money>retire happy” formula that is the norm in our society.
3. Over the course of 2015 I tried, and failed, to get into several elite-MBA programs in the US.  While I was ultimately unsuccessful I found the process of applying to these schools immensely introspective, but it also taught me a lot about how young people can
   1. Set themselves up for success if they want to pursue a typical path to business success through schooling and
   2. Who should say “Screw it” and never even think about following the typical path of success.
4. Posting takes a crap tonne of time, time that I don’t want to spend writing, re-writing, editing, filtering, wordsmithing, blah blah blah. Because of this I’ll be writing the majority of the posts off the cuff with as little pre-thought as possible.  All authentic Taren, all the time…terrifying.
5. Swearing, hmmmmm. Haven’t decided how careful I should be about that.
6. Suggest topics for me here, on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, wherever your little heart desires.  I can be reached everywhere at ARaceTaren.

That’s all for now, I’m off to breakfast with the triathlon gang.  Have a tremendous 2016 everyone!

YouTube Video Vlog.001 to kick off 2016: