Charley’s Annual Review

This should be fun!

As 2009 comes to a close and I, like many others, get excited at the prospect of 2010 being a new beginning, I’ve set some lofty goals to push myself on many levels, with the promise that if I fall short on some of them, that I won’t beat myself up over it.

But first, a look back on the year that was…

2009 revolved largely around my family.  My wife had a very difficult pregnancy with the triplets and we spent nearly seven weeks in the hospital before giving birth to them.  That meant a lot of tough nights sleeping in the hospital for the both of us.  I think during that time I spent only two nights at home alone and I found that to be tougher than sleeping in a one-seat pull-out chair in the hospital every night.

We gave birth to them three months early at Children’s Hospital.  As a result, from the end of May till the end of September, we spent most of our “free” hours with them everyday in the Neo-Natal ICU.  One baby (Bella) came home in September followed by Owen and Noah at the end of October.

Despite the worry, stress, time and resources spent, I did manage to lose twenty pounds and run 13.1 miles in the Buffalo Half Marathon in May.  Subsequent to that, I fell off the wagon hard, tumbled over the embankment and rolled down a rocky cliff into icy cold water.  That is the metaphorical way of saying that I put on 32 pounds in the second half of the year and can’t last three minutes jogging on a treadmill at the time of this writing.

I managed another semi-long term goal which was very important to my internal psychology in 2009.  I wrote my first eBook and published it here as a free download on You, Simplified.  I’ve been pining about writing a book for many years, and while it is a smallish book at 53 pages (11,000 words) it was still immensely satisfying to pass this hurdle and it gives me the confidence to complete longer writing assignments in the future.

I started the Scribe for the Tribe blog the day after my children were born, as a means of updating family and friends on the progress of the babies.  They’ve grown from under two pounds at birth, to healthy babies at over 12 pounds each now.  It’s simply amazing.

A few weeks ago, I started this blog, You, Simplified, as a means to further my passion for learning and writing, and sharing it with whomever is interested.  This site will be one of my primary focuses in 2010.

So, 2009 closes having built a wonderful, healthy, instant family, having written a book, and having launched two blogs.

On to the future…

2010 – Lofty Goals

With 2010 waiting (im)patiently in front of us, I’ve decided to dedicate this year to the theme of Passion.  All of my goals and desires are aimed at bringing me closer to my ideal life, while removing more and more of those things that I don’t want to devote resources to.  I’ve divided the 2010 goals into general categories of focus, as you’ll see below.  There is a lot here and I am fully aware that we commonly overestimate what can be accomplished in one year, and underestimate what can be accomplished in five or ten (paraphrasing Anthony Robbins).

So, I realize the concerns about setting myself up for failure, but in actuality, this knowledge is very empowering.  I won’t beat myself up for failing at some of these, because I am confident that the pursuit in and of itself is worthwhile.  I believe that great progress can be made in my life simply in the pursuit of these goals.

I see basically two kinds of minimalists in the blogging world these days.  There is the camp who advocates not setting goals and basically doing less, and there are those who try to eliminate the unessential so they can pursue their important goals with passion and energy.  Neither camp is wrong and each has its merits.  I won’t pretend to preach here because they have every right to choose which camp they fall into but I, personally, subscribe to the latter camp at this point in my life.

In many ways, some of my goals are exercises in restraint and discipline, while others are in pursuit of lofty (at least for me) achievements.  Here’s a breakdown by category.

Fitness Goals

I’ve lumped both fitness and nutrition into the same category here.  I’ve a ways to go to maintain my discipline in this category.

I would like to complete the 26.1 Mile Buffalo Marathon in late May of 2010 and I am aiming for under five hours.  Yes, I realize that some may consider that a pathetic finish time.

As I sit here now, I am 5′ 9″ and weigh 198 lbs.   It is laborious for my generally small frame to carry around this weight and my knees and lower back often ache.  To go from my present condition to running a full marathon five months from now is a worthy and ambitious goal for me.

Additionally, I would like to compete in one medium length triathlon in August or September 2010.  There are a couple to choose from locally in that time frame, and I will make my choice as we get closer to the enrollment period.

This is quite a challenge for me because I can hardly swim (Triathlons are Swim, Bike, Run races).  I’ll have to write a full post on my lack of swimming skills  some day because it’s kinda funny, were I not the one living it.  Suffice it to say, when I attempted a sprint triathlon in 2007, I was embarrased that it took me 23 minutes to doggy paddle my way thru 450 yards of open water swimming.  I got lapped by the next age group that started fifteen minutes after me.  I was the third last person out of the water.  The other two had to be helped by boat.

Anyway, I’ll detail my training plans in later posts, this particular article is getting quite lengthy after all.

For nutrition, I would like to transfer over to 70% Vegetarian with 35% Raw.  What that means is, essentially any meal before dinner will be raw/vegetarian foods.  I am starting slowly at this.  In fact, I am sipping a glass of a freshly juiced mixture of apples, carrots and celery as I write this.  Normally I write with a cup of coffee on hand, so this is a bit odd for me.

You’ll notice I’ve set no weight-loss goals.  I have a figure in my head that I would like to get to, but the reality is, with the diet and training changes, I expect my body to regulate itself at whatever weight it is comfortable with.  If that’s 180 lbs, great!  170 lbs, great!  160 lbs, super!  Anything less than that, I would get a little nervous that it was too much.

Life Simplification Goals

This is an interesting set of goals because, for the most part, it’s about not doing things.

I have a few challenges set forth for myself.  I’ve long known that the major holes in my finances come from buying clothing, books (digital and print) and music (digital and CD’s).  So, as a test of my discipline, and proof that I can give up the unessential to make room for the essential, I am doing a no-spend challenge in 2010 for all of these things.  Yes, I realize that clothing is essential, but I have it in abundance, therefore, there is no reason to spend more on wants.

Books will be the real toughy, but since I will be putting together a syllabus for myself in 2010 (see below) I shouldn’t need to buy anymore.  I will just have to write down the new titles and see if I am still interested in them in 2010.

I will also be engaging in a 365 Day challenge of living with 100 personal items.  I am still narrowing down my list and hope to do a video post showing all of it in the next few days.  I find that, since I live in such an extreme four-season climate (Buffalo, New York) that my list is overwhelmingly about clothing.

All the rest of my items will be boxed up.  I haven’t decided yet what will happen to those items after the 365 days.

I don’t have a lot of social commitments outside of work, but I will also be assessing those as well to see what really falls into line with my life goals, and then eliminating the rest.

Family and Relationships

My focus is on the children, as always, but I would like to work on some specific things in this category.  First of all, not too many dads read up on and try to educate themselves on parenting.  If you fall into this category, good for you.  I try to read and apply what I can and, of course, experience is a great teacher.  We get Parenting magazine every month, and it is one of three magazines that I choose to read as part of my education (the other two being Success, and Writing).

I plan to start working with the triplets on learning to read words and do basic math.  I’m intrigued by the program Your Baby Can Read and am wondering if anyone out there has taken a look at this?  It says you can start your baby as early as three months.

Also, I’ve added another book to my reading list about parenting for my 2010 Education Syllabus.

Writing Goals

So, now that I’ve gotten my feet wet with this blogging thing and realized that I actually like it, I have some goals for 2010.  This blog, only being a few weeks old, has less than two dozen subscribers.  I would like to take that to 1000 subscribers by the end of 2010.  That involves a rather extensive project plan that I am still working through the details on.  I would be happy to share that here when it is completed.  At a very high level, the next couple paragraphs describe the overall plan.

To help pay for expenses here, I would like to launch two products this year on the blog.  I keep the advertising to a bare minimum right now.  I think I only have AdSense on Mobile and RSS right now, not on the site.  I haven’t decided whether I will ever sell ad space on the site, but I reserve the right to do so.  I enjoy supporting products that I personally consume, and that’s why I am rather undecided on AdSense.

My monetary goal for year 1 with this blog and my other writing endeavors is to have a monthly income of $500 a month.  Again, I’m under no pretenses that this will be easy.  Most bloggers make nary a dime.

I plan on posting one longer article a week, not unlike this one, sharing some great articles I’ve read on the weekends, and giving periodic updates on my personal goals.

And I will work towards making myself a valued member of the blogging community by networking with other bloggers in my niche.  That includes occasional guest posting and commenting on other articles.

As far as print writing, I’ve started a manuscript for a book on Minimalism.  It will be as long as it needs to be to get my message across but no longer.  I would rather self-publish that, so that I can control every step of the way and I loathe trying to figure out how to pitch a real publishing house, but we’ll see where that ends up.

I recorded and released an acoustic album in 2008 but took nearly all of 2009 off in regards to music.  I have some modest goals to dabble in this again.  I’d like to write another half dozen songs for a shorter EP and put the band back together for once or twice a month practicing.  I also would like to get three gigs during the second half of 2010.  This is really my form of socializing.  I don’t hang out at bars with friends.  In fact, I can’t remember the last time I hung out with anybody for anything other than my wife.

I am just a private person, and as such, I’d like to try to be a bit more social in 2010, partly because I think it’s important that my children see us as social creatures.

Education

I’ve decided to get more disciplined on the information I consume in 2010.  I find that the curriculum environment as provided in colleges would suit me better than the rather un-focused practice I engage in now for reading (i.e. trying to read ten books at once).  Also, I am pretty damn busy with my beautiful babies, so I’m not going to set goals like reading 52 books in 52 weeks.

Instead, I’ve decided to set aside twelve non-fiction books on various disciplines that I’ve not read before and I will read one per month, and report on them here.

There are at least two books on the list that are a bit lengthy so if it takes me longer than a month, so be it.  It’s basically three semester’s worth of self-directed learning.

I also will share a couple of other education plans via a video post in a week or so but basically, I plan on finishing a course on blogging as well as telling you fine readers about a nice audio book club that saves me time from reading a ton of other books.

Financial Goals

We’re essentially debt free right now though, depending on the day, we sometimes have a small balance on the shared credit card.  We do have three rental properties with mortgages on them.  I want to pay off the smallest balance mortgage of the three in 2010.

This is a very tall order.

When we had the triplets, my wife left paid work.  That also meant a loss of 40% of our income.  Couple that with three new mouths to feed and a significant change in the health care coverage offered by my employer in 2010 means that we can’t live like we did previously.   I have $25,500 to pay down on that mortgage.  We will see what inroads I can make in 2010.

We have a comfortable Emergency Fund of six months expenses right now, and it may grow a bit organically…or it could get wiped out with a few major repairs.  I’m not setting a goal for this right now except to maintain it in 2010.

Professional Goals

I don’t really have any at this stage.  I’m a Technical Project Manager by day for a large global corporation.  I work on larger, global projects.  I enjoy the people, but sometimes feel disassociated from the process.  My desire to create things and be my own boss is something I can’t ignore.

So, overall, I have a five year plan to exit the workforce if my residual income can replace my work income.  This coincides with the time that the children enter school and that my wife re-enters the workforce.

Till then, there is one more step I would like to take at work.  I would like to manage other project managers.  I’ve discussed this with my management and they will certainly try to give me the tools I need to take that step, and for that, I am appreciative.

So that’s really it for 2010.  There’s a lot on the plate and I get really excited by it all.  It’s the reason why I embrace life simplification strategies, so that I have the time and resources to concentrate on these things that I want to accomplish.

Looking forward to sharing my progress with all of you in 2010 and please feel free to share any of your goals below, in the comments.

Happy New Year!

Tagged as: New Years Resolutions