New Years Resolutions for 2009

It’s that time of the year, where I check in on where I was, and see where I’m going. Last year I had five main goals. It looks like I’m going to have the same number again this year, though a couple of them are holdovers from 2008. I’m impressed with the progress of these bad boys though, there’s one that I did completely, and all five recieved some significant attention in 2008.

1. Get our finances in order
   Partial success! We got a will, financial planner, and good life insurance. We failed on the budget stuff, but that’s now a priority for this year.
2. Get organized
   Partial success. I created “The Behemoth”, and we did some major culling. We need to do more work on the basement, and have to completely organize the office.
3. Get in better shape
   My goal was to get down to 200lbs, I failed in that, I did however manage to lose 15lbs, but I’m back up 5, so the end result is I’m down 10lbs on the year. I think this will get easier as Maks gets older and I’m able to get back to the gym…back on the list for next year!
4. Learn a new language:
   Great success! I learned Ruby on Rails.
5. Make my businesses better
   I made All New Comics better, though it was mostly through emergency bug fixes and hack preventions. I’m going to get it into an autopilot mode this year so that I can focus on HeadsDown instead. It makes us money and doesn’t require much time, now to figure out how to turn it into a money making engine.

My resolutions for 2009:

1. Get in better shape
   Second verse, same as the first. I have a gym membership, I have a plan that was working, now I just need to focus on it and do it. I would like to be down around 200lbs by August 2009 (a drop of 35lbs).
2. Make hard business decisions
   I really need to focus on stuff that makes money. Work on HeadsDown, and figure out a way of offloading some of my ANC responsibilities. I’m a “big picture” and “large projects” guy, not a day to day maintenance guy. I’m going to talk to Pete about bringing someone on to do the monthly maintenance stuff, and take that off my plate for good. I’ll still take care of billing and the little stuff, but not the long things like monthly updates and even the weekly stuff.I really want to focus on HeadsDown this year with Ryan and get that back to making us money. Plus, let’s not forget that I have a day job that demands about 50-60 hours a week!
3. Get organized
   We are on our way, we just need a little more work. The office needs a weekend. The basement needs a weekened. Then I need to start focusing on finishing the basement and making it usable. In the spring I’d like to finish up the garage (slatwall all around and then spraying everything down with some off-white latex paint).
4. Budget better
   We’ve done pretty well for ourselves, but we need to really look at what’s coming in vs what’s going out and figure out where we can cut back, where we need to boost stuff up, and what we really need to live on.
5. Make a web comic
   Empress Kaylin and the Crisis at Zythion 11 has been in my head for 3 years now. Liam has agreed to come on board and do illustrations, I just need to write and do some layouts. This has to become a priority and quickly!