I'm Just Sharing

I see the year 2009 as kind of a bellwether year in my personal and professional life, and therefore I figure I have to have goals that help me get to places I want to be eventually in both of my lives. Though I’m still working on coming to grips with it, I’ll be turning 50 at some point this year, even though, overall I don’t feel any older than 19 or 20, which is what my dad used to say to me all the time. But I am older; I feel it when I get on the floor for something and then have to try to get back up. I feel it in the mornings when my body aches and creaks as I try to get out of bed. I have a disease that I’m fighting all the time and not winning the battle, unfortunately, but I keep working on it, in my own way. Yet I’m always optimistic about life in general and my life, and my mother said she sees that as my strongest point.

So yes, more goals. I’ve been writing goals for years, probably starting in 1999, the year I turned 40, but I didn’t start putting them on the internet until 2006. I haven’t always reached my goals, but I don’t let that stop me from writing them and putting them in public, because one, we still have to have goals, and two, one is more apt to at least give a better effort to goals that they share with others than goals they keep to themselves.

First, I’m going to address last year’s goals, but I’m also doing something a little bit different this time around. In previous years, I’ve only put five goals together, and only written it on one blog, my business blog called Mitch’s Blog. This year, I’m putting the same beginning on each of my three blogs, then I’m putting different goals on each of those blogs, which means I’ll be accountable for 15 goals rather than just five. Talk about pressure! And yet, it’s no pressure at all because I should be able to achieve at least half of them this year, with some renewed faith, more and better planning, and of course all of you looking at me and saying “hey, what’s going on there?”

So, let’s look back at last year’s goals and see how well I did.

My first goal was to lose 25 pounds. No, that didn’t happen, and I’m ashamed that it didn’t happen, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying, at least initially. My weight stayed pretty much the same while I was home at the early part of the year, though I was exercising at least 4 days a week. I continued on my exercise plan and my eating plan, where I had a major change in February that didn’t result in weight loss, but did result in a drastic decrease in my glucose level, which was very important.

Then I started going out of town more, and on the first go-round I started gaining weight and my glucose went out of control. When that contract was over I came home, lost that extra weight and got my glucose back under control again, but didn’t lose any more weight than the bit I’d gained. Now I’m on a new consulting assignment all the way across the country, and even though glucose has gone up I haven’t gained a single pound since I’ve been gone. But I also haven’t exercised. So, I will be working on fitting exercise time in when I go back out of town, and work on modifying how I eat while I’m in a hotel room, especially now that I have a room with a kitchen in it. I’m sending back containers to pre-cook and measure some meals, which I’ve not been able to do before while on consulting assignments, so hopefully this will help me get everything back under control.

My next goal was to get caught up on my taxes. No, that didn’t happen, mainly because my consulting assignments were so spread out that I couldn’t put anything consistent together.

My next goal was to give speaking engagements in five states that I didn’t give one in before. That didn’t happen because the person I’d hired to help me book speaking engagements decided to get out of the business.

My next goal was to finish writing one of the many books I’d started. That didn’t quite turn out the way I had intended, but I did write an ebook on using one’s website as a marketing tool and started selling it online.

My final goal was to find the time to take a 3-day vacation. I haven’t had a vacation since 1998, or taken any real time off since 2001 (when I was still employed with someone else), and I had hoped this would be the year. I get to claim one trip a year as a business expense, but I didn’t get an overnight trip in this year, so no vacation. That’s not good, but I guess that’s my life to date.

Anyway, that’s a quick recap of my goals for last year. At this point, my goals will be different on each blog of mine, and I’ll be giving the links to each blog post so the most intrepid of you can check them all out to see what I’m hoping to do with myself in 2009. A couple will be repeated from what’s above, but not on the same blog; at least not all of them.

On this blog, I’m going to list my top five professional and personal goals for 2009. They are:

1. Earn at least $2,500 online. This is kind of an audacious goal for me, and yet I keep thinking it shouldn’t be this hard to do. When I gave my November report, I only gave the numbers for this blog and nothing else. I think I’m going to change that up for December and ongoing because I’m truthfully not expecting that blog to make that kind of money, though the money it makes I’ll love anyway, but I’d love to get to a point where I’m making enough online income that I really don’t have to do anything else if I’m not in the mood. However, one has to have a starting point, and I figure that since my overall online income for 2008 has increased about 300%, I have shown that one can make some money online, so why not have a stopgap goal that’s possibly attainable if I do a few more things? And the thing is, y’all might benefit from the information if I get there; what’s to lose, right?

2. Revamp my S&S site. S&S stands for Services and Stuff, and it was my dream of having a web portal of sorts that hasn’t done close to what I had hoped it might be. I actually did get an offer from someone to buy it this year and turned it down because I felt there was still some great potential with it. So, I’m keeping it, but thinking about how to change it around.

3. Work my way up to 500 subscribers to my blog. That’s not such a bad goal, even though, to tell you the truth, I’m not fully sure how to do it. I mean, I write pretty good content here, get lots of comments, comment on other blogs, and even wrote a post saying that I wanted more RSS subscribers, which perked up the subscription base a little bit, but then it tailed off again. If I’d put that my goal was 100, that would be a nice improvement, but hey, let’s think big here. By the way, I want more RSS subscribers!

4. Determine at least three series to write on this year. I wrote two series this year that I thought were pretty good, one on blogging, the other on writing a book. The series on blogging got lots of hits, but the one on writing a book didn’t do as well. Yet, I still think both were important. I’m not sure what this year’s series will be on, but I want to have three more sources that show I’m at least somewhat knowledgeable in some particular fields.

5. Get into Technorati’s top 60,000. You know what actually drove this one? It was this post on the top ten black blogs of July 2008. That was the article that made me decide I wanted to have a highly ranked blog, and then after checking out Winning The Web’s Top Internet Marketing Blogs, where I’m sitting at 248 at the present time, I realized that Technorati was my way to work my way up into the mix. Right now I’m sitting on 101,157, which is a nice increase for a blog that’s just past its first year in existence, but I want more. I thought about working it through my business blog, but realized this is really the one where I have a chance to get it that high, and of course with it being my main commerce blog, the higher it’s ranked, the more advertisers of all types might come ‘a-calling.

And that’s that. you’ll have to check out Mitch’s Blog to find out my personal and business goals for 2009. To learn about my financial goals for 2009, you’ll have to check out Top Finance Blog.

So, I’ve stated my goals. What do you think of them? What are your goals for 2009? Share them, if you dare.

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