2014 was another great and successful year for me. While there were no cross-country moves this year, I did have two epic adventures – an excursion to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon, as well as a hop across the pond – and continued to explore Seattle and become comfortable living on the west coast.
It can often be difficult to make friends as an adult, and I think this is especially true if you pack up and move thousands of miles. Now that I have lived in Seattle for a year and a half, I’ve started to establish more life-long friendships and relationships with people in my new city. Even though that wasn’t a goal that I listed at the beginning of the year, I consider this one of my top accomplishments.
What goals did I achieve in 2014? Where did I fail?
Before I start working on my goals for 2015, I think it’s important to reflect upon what goals I wasn’t able to accomplish this past year.
1) Run my 4th marathon. This goal was accomplished, and I even broke my personal record by two and a half minutes! Gold star for me!
2) Continue reading & writing more. This goal was half accomplished. I definitely devoted more time to reading. I’ve found that reading one or two nights a week before going to bed is a great way to unwind. My cross-country traveling is also an opportune time for this. However, I did not write as often as I would have liked – although I am satisfied with the number of blog posts that I published both here and on NimbleUser’s web site.
3) Volunteer more. I’m also only considering this goal half accomplished. My main desire was to find a non-profit organization for which I was truly passionate about. I spent an afternoon volunteering at the Cherry Street Food Bank in mid-December – a step in the right direction. For 2015, I am committing to volunteering at least two hours a month at the food bank.
4) Continue learning. I completed one course on Coursera and started to learn a new language on Duolingo – which failed miserably. This is definitely a continued goal for 2015.
5) Improve personal web site & other web projects. I did okay here. I improved this web site a bit, and I finished a web site redesign that I had been working on for a friend of mine. There is still one more work in progress that I am on target to wrap up in early 2015.
Onward & Upward: The 2015 List
Similar to the goals that I set for myself in 2014, my goals and resolutions for 2015 are somewhat repetitive to the previous year. I’ve come up with new goals for myself as well – including a professional objective.
I’m going to organize my goals this year in order of what I deem to be the most important to me, at least at the time I am writing this, with the most important goal listed first.
1) By mid-2015, I will no longer rely on glasses or contacts. Lasik surgery is a desire that has been building in my mind for the past two or three months, the desire growing stronger and stronger every time it takes me more than ten minutes to put in my contacts in the morning. My eyes are tired of contacts. I’m tired of contacts. The first morning that I wake up and don’t have to put on my glasses to read the time will be a glorious day.
Progress so far: I’ve picked out the office that I want to perform my surgery and have scheduled my pre-op screening with my eye doctor in January!
2) By the end of 2015, I will have raced in 3-4 half marathons and at least one duathlon. I’m going to shift my focus for this upcoming year and commit to not running a marathon. While running a marathon is a great achievement, the time commitment required to properly train for a marathon would affect my ability to obtain my other goals. I want to become a solid half marathon runner and break my personal record in at least one race this year.
Progress so far: I signed up for the Snoqualmie Valley Half Marathon! I also have many other potential races in mind, but have not yet registered for them.
3) Professional goal: by the end of 2015, I will earn the Advanced Salesforce Developer Certificate. I passed the Salesforce Developer Certification in 2012, so it’s time to progress to the next level. I am currently aiming to take the exam portion in January or February so that I can schedule the programming & essay portions as soon as they become available.
4) For the third year in a row, I will read & write even more than I have in previous years. I’ve set a goal to write 120,000 60,000 words in 2015 – an average of 5,000 words per month.
5) Another repeat goal, but I will continue learning in 2015. I will devote more time to courses on Coursera and watching educational videos. I have watched most of the videos published by SciShow, and I would also like to begin watching CrashCourse. If I feel overly ambitious, I would also like to look into applying for a masters degree… but I am in no rush to hurry back to college at this time, so that might end up being a goal for 2016.
6) Also for the third year in a row, I am committing to volunteer more frequently. We get 1 full volunteer day at NimbleUser, and I only used a half day in 2014. As mentioned above, I am committing to volunteering two hours a month at the local food bank.
7) Start looking into what it takes to purchase a house or condo. I don’t think I need to go into much detail here. This will likely be purely research more than anything else.
Follow My Progress!
I think outlining my goals for 2015 is a great start, but I probably won’t be posting regular progress updates on here. If you’d like to follow my progress throughout the year, feel free to follow along on Twitter.
Happy 2015!
— Robert