Jeremiah Tolbert

You knew it was com­ing, although you prob­a­bly didn’t sus­pect I would be so bloody late about it.  In this post, I will break down my suc­cesses, my fail­ures, my hopes, and my regrets, for the pre­vi­ous year, and the year now bar­rel­ing down upon us.  This is going to get long, so here’s a cut to make life eas­ier for ya if you want to skip it.

2010 Goals

Reach my tar­get weight of 180 pounds.

Fail. Is this really a sur­prise?  I had vary­ing lev­els of suc­cess through­out the year as far as weight con­trol goes.  Right now, I’m putting the whole she­bang down as one big pot of deli­cious fail, but I feel I learned a bit about my weight issues and hope to have more suc­cess in 2011.

Save at least $100 per month.

Success.  Thanks in no small part to a great busi­ness year, I was able to save $100 per month and more.  Prior to being a free­lancer, I was a ter­ri­ble per­son when it came to sav­ing money.  “Why save for tomor­row what can be spend on friv­o­lity today?” was my motto. But being depen­dent upon a vari­able income stream changes the way you think about money.  I started to think of my sav­ings account as a video game score I wanted to get as high as pos­si­ble.  I set a new high score this past year, thanks to that.  In 2011, I hope to grow that num­ber even further.

Read 24 books this year.  At least 30% should be nonfiction.

Partial Success. I actu­ally read 35 books this past year, count­ing some of the graphic nov­els and audio­books (and why the hell not?).   So I exceeded this goal by 50%, which is pretty damned good if I do say so myself.  Since I started writ­ing, I’ve been an aggres­sive short fic­tion reader, but with the slow shift of inter­est to writ­ing nov­els (some­thing I might actu­ally get paid a decent amount of cash for should I actu­ally suc­ceed in com­plet­ing one and sell­ing it, some mighty big con­di­tion­als), I was deter­mined to spend more time read­ing books than short fic­tion.  I thought maybe my short fic­tion read­ing wouldn’t suf­fer, and in part it did not because there are a few Year’s Best antholo­gies in that list of books.

The fail part comes from my per­cent­age of non­fic­tion.  Only 7 of the year’s titles were non­fic­tion, although there were a few tech­ni­cal books I didn’t fin­ish that would have grown that a bit more if I had stayed focused on them.

I read so much non­fic­tion in the course of my day in the form of arti­cles, blog posts, and so forth that I find it harder to immerse myself in non­fic­tion for plea­sure.  However, I’ve also been impressed with how much sheer knowl­edge I acquire and file away read­ing great non­fic­tion, which for a writer like myself, that’s not some­thing you can put too high a value on.  So in 2011, I’ll be aim­ing for the same thing.

About 30% of my reads this past year were graphic nov­els and comics.  I spent a good chunk of the mid­dle of the year think­ing I was going to write a 6-​​issue comic minis­eries.  I’ll come back to this later when I round up the year in total.

Design 3 things a week.  Play more in Photoshop and Illustrator, even zBrush.

Fail.  This isn’t for lack of try­ing, really.  I really poured myself into pay­ing client work, and this left me lit­tle time or energy for cre­ative play.  I think this was a mis­take on my part, and it is some­thing that I need to address mov­ing for­ward in 2011.  Moving for­ward is the name of the game.  As a designer, I can­not afford to get stag­nant, even if I learned a tremen­dous amount as a devel­oper.  In my niche, I need to bal­ance the two fields care­fully.  I think I slanted too heav­ily to the left brain in 2010.

Complete my 365 pho­tog­ra­phy project with­out miss­ing a day.

Fail.  This is the fail that hits me hard­est, because I really thought this would present no prob­lems.  I love pho­tog­ra­phy, love it almost more than any­thing else, and it comes very eas­ily to me to be doing it, unlike writ­ing which is work, and web design which is work. I enjoy those other things, but the effort to get started is not insignif­i­cant.  I can pick up a cam­era and start mak­ing art in a mat­ter of moments if I let myself.  The prob­lem is, time spent doing that is not really time spent mak­ing money.

About 1/​3rd of the way through the year, I decided that pho­tog­ra­phy, as things were, would only cost me money and pro­vide me with very lit­tle income.  I real­ized I couldn’t afford to con­tinue with such a heavy focus if I wasn’t will­ing to do pho­tog­ra­phy tasks that would at least get the equip­ment pay­ing for itself.  So I very delib­er­ately set aside pho­tog­ra­phy in total, includ­ing the 365 project.   I haven’t picked up my cam­era once since my Yellowstone expe­di­tion, although I do use my iPhone to take a nice snap­shot now and then.

I really hope to get my life into a place where I can take up the cam­era more reg­u­larly again and not feel like the time spent with it is cost­ing me income. Perhaps after Sarah gets a job as a teacher.

Make 3 new friends, regard­less of their inter­ests or polit­i­cal persuasions.

Success.   I talked a lit­tle bit about Paul and how he’d changed my atti­tudes about reli­gion in a pre­vi­ous reverb10 post.   I think I knew head­ing into the year that I needed to keep my mind open about other people’s dif­fer­ences if I was going to develop a bet­ter in-​​person social network.

I made more than 3 new friends this year, at least at the casual acquain­tance level.  At the seri­ous friend level, I’d say it’s about that, maybe a lit­tle more or less.  This is a hard one to mea­sure, because I worry about con­sid­er­ing peo­ple friends who don’t think of me that way.  It’s very grade school of me I sup­pose, but some habits and trau­mas die hard.

I feel very sat­is­fied with how far I came in 2010.  I’m hop­ing that I don’t have to move halfway across the coun­try in the sum­mer and lose the progress I’ve made in order for Sarah to find a posi­tion.  But at the same time, the prospect of a new adven­ture in a new locale is tempt­ing as well.

Relaunch Dr. Roundbottom by mid-​​year.

Fail.  I don’t feel too bad about this one.  I just wasn’t feel­ing the spark.  I spent some time devel­op­ing a Roundbottom online social game with Paul, although both our sched­ules really pre­vent us from putting seri­ous effort into a project of such scale, so it was tabled (although I still really want to make it).  The core Roundbottom project failed to get off the ground again because of my deci­sions regard­ing pho­tog­ra­phy.  Sad for the fans, of which I include myself, but if I learned one major les­son in 2010, it was that I needed to focus more on fewer things.

Become more visu­ally cre­ative by keep­ing a clip book and really being active in cap­tur­ing inter­est­ing design.  Note at least one thing per week.

Partial Success.  I do have a dig­i­tal clip file of inspir­ing bits,a nd I did add to it.  Did I do it once a week? No.  Again, I found myself swept up in work.  This is a goal I am going to double-​​down on this year.

So that cov­ers the per­sonal goals.  Now I’ll run through some of busi­ness goals I had for 2010, although I’ll be leav­ing out some of them for pri­vacy reasons.

Reach out to 3 cold-​​call prospects per week.

Fail.  Fail because I didn’t have to do this—the refer­rals com­ing in through­out the year kept me more than busy enough.  This year is look­ing a lit­tle less solid in that regard, so here’s another goal I expect to double-​​down on.  I hate cold-​​calling, absolutely loathe sell­ing any­thing really.  I don’t like intrud­ing on another person’s time with my needs to make an income.  But I do believe in my ser­vices.  I do believe I help make the lives of my clients eas­ier and I help pro­mote their work.  I just try to keep that in mind as I approach peo­ple who I think could use my services.

Create a pric­ing sheet for the website.

Fail.  I wasn’t solid on this goal in the first place.  I worry about tip­ping my hand to my com­peti­tors too much, and I would really like to avoid hav­ing to com­pete on price.  In case you’re won­der­ing, I do projects with bud­gets that range from $500 to $10000.  It just depends on the project.  Pricing sheets are hard, but author web­sites do tend to fall into the lower end of the spec­trum unless we’re talk­ing a mas­sive site for a well-​​established author.  I go back and forth on this one.

Develop a word­press theme to give away for free.

Fail. Not for lack of try­ing.  For lack of time.

Learn jQuery and PHP more effectively.

Success.  This is a point of pro­fes­sional pride for me in 2010.  I’ve made leaps and bounds as a programmer/​developer in the past year.   I was com­pe­tent in a lot of ways before, but my strength was in the visual side before.  Now, I feel that scale has tilted.  I won­der if I might need to choose one or the other in the long run, but I like being a one-​​stop shop.  I like being involved in every aspect of a site.

Work a min­i­mum of 30 hours a week, with 20 of those being bill­able at least.

Success.  My work weeks ranged from 30 hours to 70 hours a week in the past year.  This is a silly goal that should have been rep­re­sented by rev­enue goals more so—the time I put in is closely tied to that any­way.  Still, I set sched­ule guide­lines like this for myself to keep myself on task.  I worry about becom­ing com­pla­cent and lazy, and over the hol­i­days, that worry has been demon­strated to be valid.  It’s too easy to slip.  I have to keep on myself about this sort of thing mov­ing for­ward.  Increasing my pro­duc­tiv­ity is para­mount to my con­tin­ued success.

Set up a print store to sell medium-​​cost prints of my photographs.

Success.  My pho­tog­ra­phy print store can be found here.  I went with an out­side solu­tion after real­iz­ing that I needed to cut time spent on pho­tog­ra­phy a lot more.  I’ve not sold  a sin­gle print through the store, but I have sold a num­ber of prints on dis­play in gal­leries around the area.  Selling pho­tographs online seems pretty point­less to me so far.

Bring in at least $60,000 gross this year.

Success and then some. Thanks to my amaz­ing clients.

Continue to explore low-​​maintenance rev­enue streams.

Fail.  LMRSes?  I don’t believe they exist.  *cue attack*

Stock art takes a tremen­dous amount of time for very lit­tle money.  The only aspect of this I’m still con­sid­er­ing is devel­op­ing WordPress themes for sale in the WordPress theme markets.

Thoughts on 2010

I failed to write much, but then, I didn’t have much in the way of goals to write.  My focus was clearly on my busi­ness, which makes sense given that it’s how I keep a roof over our heads and food on the table.  In an ideal world, I could spend more time cre­at­ing for myself, but I wasn’t born wealthy, alas, and what I do is not likely to make me rich any time soon.  So I con­tinue to divide my time and my interests.

I’m blessed that I get to spend as much time on my var­i­ous pur­suits as I do.  I try not to lose track of that fact.  I have more “free” time than most peo­ple, and I feel a con­stant pres­sure to make good on that advan­tage.  To earn it, and put it to good use.

Like I said ear­lier,  2010 was about learn­ing to focus on fewer things.  Putting more effort into fewer projects, fewer goals.  The suc­cesses and fail­ures I had reflected this win­now­ing of inter­ests.  I feel pretty good about what I accom­plished, and the only fail­ure I’m really beat­ing myself up over is my inabil­ity to lose weight—but that was noth­ing new, and in fact, spend­ing even more time at a desk than usual prob­a­bly makes this more dif­fi­cult than before.  Not that I should be mak­ing excuses for myself.  I’m fat, I know it, and if I want to live into my 100s, I need to get skinny.  No arguments.

Goals for 2011

In bul­let list for­mat, the personal:

• Lose 30 pounds.  Eat more healthy foods, eat out less.  Exercise more.
• Read 36 books, 30% non­fic­tion and technical.
• Complete a 60,000 word YA novel.
• Write at least 6 short sto­ries and put them on the market.
• Make three new friends, regard­less of the political/​religious beliefs or inter­ests.  Take a deeper inter­est in the human­ity of those around me, espe­cially those that are different.
• Save enough money to pay off the credit card in 2012.
• Create 3 things a week.  Little designs, lit­tle photo manip­u­la­tions, flash fic­tion.  Just keep cre­at­ing, and remind myself why I do what I do.  Little acts of cre­ative joy, no mat­ter how heavy my work­load gets.
• Keep my clip book/​sketch book active, adding at least one inter­est­ing thing a week.
• Stop and mar­vel at the won­der­ful life I live more often.  Be more thank­ful to those who make it pos­si­ble. Continue to improve my pos­i­tiv­ity, reduc­ing my pessimism.

Business-​​related:

• Develop one WordPress theme to sell as a licensed product.
• Contact 3 prospects per week.  No exceptions!
• Make at least $70,000 gross.
• Master HTML5 and CSS3 more clearly, and exper­i­ment with it. Move closer to the cut­ting edge.
• Grow my guaranteed-​​income of ser­vice con­tracts by 50%
• Redesign the Clockpunk Studios website.

My three sim­ple areas of focus in 2011 are: my health, my writ­ing, and my busi­ness.  Specifically, my weight, my writ­ing of fic­tion in the form of short sto­ries and nov­els, and grow­ing Clockpunk Studios to ser­vice even more clients with even bet­ter qual­ity work.

If you actu­ally made it this far through my utterly self-​​indulgent post, thank you.  I wish you the best of luck in 2011 as well.   And I ask you, if you see me slip­ping from my focus, to nudge me about it.  I am going to need all the help I can get to keep mov­ing forward.

Thank you for all your sup­port, even if it’s just read­ing this blog and mak­ing the occa­sional com­ment.  It all mat­ters.  It all helps make life a lit­tle eas­ier.  So again, thank you.

Onward!

Share This:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Tags: 2010, 2011, business evaluation, goals, personal