Thursday, December 29, 2011

New Year's Resolutions 2012

Ok and here are the New Year's Goals for 2012. I've also set up a step-by-step monthly schedule for each (well, for most) of these so they can be attained. Allowing for unknowns and surprises, if I don't complete at least 6 of them by the end of the year, well, that would suck. Number 7 and 8 are more resolutions thans goals, but they're all pretty concrete.

1. Live somewhere else
I realize I just moved to Portland, but as I approach the age where I will have to settle down, I don't want to end up somewhere wondering if I could have ended up somewhere else. So hopefully it'll be Taiwan, but if that doesn't work then possibly Costa Rica, or Manila, or Santiago, or Lucca, or Berlin, or Seoul, or somewhere else.

2. Have book published
I wrote my novel, had an editor go through it, and I'm in the process of finding an agent. Once I do it's a question of finding a publisher. I realize this is a long, drawn out process, so I might have to edit this to "Have someone publishing my book" by year end.

3. Learn to cook at least 1 dish well.
Let's keep it at one per year.

4. Sell off Lugano Wedding
Not 100% sure on this one yet, but I really don't think there's much more I can do for it. I think someone else could work wonders for it, just not me. But we'll see how this progresses. Anyway, making a business self-sustaining and profitable was too vague last year, so I want to deal with my businesses one by one.

5. Make the Dracula business work
Check out www.TheRealDracula.com soon.

6. Set up Translation business
I do freelance translations, and I have friends who do so as well. It would be nice to group together and help each other out. I wrote something up on Acahi.com and I should start growing that (and making a better website).

7. Never buy retail again
The first real resolution and experiment. It's been mentioned several times (on several podcasts I listen to, at least) that in this day and age anyone who buys retail is an idiot. So, in that vein, I don't want to be an idiot. Grocery shopping ties up much of my time, so I will subscribe to Amazon Prime and order all my groceries through that (free delivery makes it worth it there). Pretty much anything else can be ordered from stores online which are tied to one or more of my airline miles or hotel rewards. This way I get rewards every time I spend and I never have to take the time to physically go to the store. I realize there may be exceptions, so I'll allow for in-store purchases as needed as long as I'm part of their rewards/points program. I still need to figure out haircuts I guess.

8. Have one day a week without Internet
Another resolution, and this is also very experimental. We'll see how this goes. If it starts hitting my earnings or productivity negatively then I'll stop. Until then I close my laptop and disconnect wi-fi on my phone one day per week.

9. See whales
I never have, so I should

Monday, December 26, 2011

Recap on NY Resolutions for 2011

It's the time of year again when I take stock of what I have (and have not) accomplished in the past 12 months. Around one year ago I wrote up some New Year's resolutions, or goals, which I set for myself, and let's see how I followed through on them.




1. Learn to cook 5 dishes well
I'm pretty sure this was the second year in a row that I had this on my list, but I don't think I've gotten any further than two dishes. I might stop there for now and just assign myself one dish per year (since that seems to be my pace). I have no real reason to speed this up either, since I definitely haven't caught the cooking "bug".

2. Read Wordpress for Dummies
Done and done. Although I feel like new plugins and updates are coming along all the time.

3. Create a System for Lugano Wedding
I set one up, tore it down, and set one up again. I have one now, although I'm not sure it's working well. I'm slowly realizing that I really am the weak link in this and should probably take myself out of the equation as much as possible. This does seem odd, however, so I should figure out the details here.

4. Find Contributors for DumbAgent
There have been a couple this past year, and of high quality, although no regular contributors have come up. Something is better than nothing, but more needs to be done. It might be interesting to try various marketing tactics for this.

5. Update my Personal Website
Done. You can go to OceanGebhardt.com or to About.me/RobertGebhardt to check them out.


6. Run 10k.
Finished in 54 minutes, so I'll call it done. I thought this would lead to a greater interest in running, which it didn't.

7. Go in a Hot Air Balloon
Still haven't done this. Had one opportunity, although it conflicted with all my plans and was a tad expensive for a very boring area. I thought I might as well wait until I find an interesting area (the Alps, the Cappadocia hills, etc.)


8. Visit CERN
Done as well, and I will add that it was awesome. I highly recommend this for anyone who wants to get their nerd on. Of course, the post-doc giving us the tour said he didn't think the Higgs would be found, so he might have just been proven wrong, or not. Physicists can never seem to make their mind up.


I'll soon post some goals for 2012. If the world is ending I might as well cross some other items off my list before Armageddon. My short term goal for now is to get over my cold.