Hey, look at that… another year just whooshed by! Time for another post of what I resolve to do this coming year and how I fared this past year.
What Happened in 2014?
This past year was a fantastic year for me personally. My highlight was playing Pebble Beach, on my birthday last April. Simply awesome, it was an amazing day, something I will never forget!
Among other things, I got settled into my "new" house which I moved into in late summer 2013, and have enjoyed the process of making my house my "home". So far my renovations have included changes to my bedroom, all 3 of the closets on the main floor (gotta love 1950s bungalows!) as well as my bathroom, which I gutted and renovated entirely top to bottom. It was a lot of fun…
On the business side, I'm keeping very busy. For the first time in my five years working on my own, I didn't have a significant contract to keep me going. I'd been working close to full-time at a long-time client of mine for a while and this year it dropped down to an average of less than 2 days a week. That was a significant change of course, and I was a little concerned about how long it might take to fill the time back up, but it turns out my concern was short-lived. It could be called good luck or good measure, but people keep finding me and I haven't missed a beat. I've been in the fortunate position to have to turn down work on many occasions that I don't have time to take on. That's a good problem to have!
Now on to the point of this post… in last year's post, I described my resolutions as even easier to reach than low-hanging fruit… well, apparently, even I can miss low-hanging fruit! Doh!
Resolution 1: update my website (done!)
- At the end of last year, I was already working on this so it was truly a no-brainer. However, when the site went live, it wasn't installed properly, and I had permissions errors constantly whenever I tried to add media to any post. Nearly every blog post I find needs screenshots to explain something. So… it was yet another excuse not to blog much until I found time to fix it. Long story short, I found time in October and the site now works correctly! Yay!
Resolution 2: blog more (trending in the right direction!)
- Excuses, excuses, excuses… ya, I know… enough of the excuses! Last year I wrote 19 blog articles. While technically more than I wrote in 2013 (12 times), it was a far cry from 2012 and 2011 where I wrote 25 and 29 times respectively. I'm pleased that I was able to start to get back to it, and I look forward to trending in the right direction.
Resolution 3: Dig further into GP2013 (not much)
- One more excuse: this year was exceptionally busy and when I wasn't working, I tended to be working on my house and I wasn't doing much learning or professional development. I have one GP2013 client but most of my clients are on GP2010, so it just wasn't something I have spent a lot of time with yet. This year, now that GP2015 is out, I have to catch up!
What's the plan for 2015?
On the personal side, I'm continuing with some major renovations, and I know I'll be distracted a little by that until it's done.
For the business side, my biggest challenge and resolution for this year is finding a balance between billable time and non-billable time still focused on business activities. For instance, rebuilding my server, setting up an Azure account, installing GP2015 and test upgrading my demo environment etc. All of that is business-related but not billable. Often I find myself worrying about being billable and then when work is slow, I take the time off to work on renovations or enjoy time with my partner or family or friends, instead of learning new skills or other business things.
So, here are some of my resolutions for 2015:
- Blog more
Hehehe… it can't be a resolution list without this on it! I'll even put a number to make it a good measurable challenge: 24 posts… 2 per month on average, and this is post #1 so there ya go, I only need 23 more!
- Schedule non-billable business time (and not for my bookkeeping!)
There are so many things I want and need to do, there is no shortage of things I could get into. The primary focus is to get ready for GP2015, as it will be upgrade time for most of my clients. It's not the amount of time that is key for me I think so much as planning it into my calendar and doing it… renos this year will mean I'm distracted and want to work on my house, so it will be doubly challenging to stay on top of this.
- Read more
The last few years I always had a "read more" resolution and I've enjoyed reading for pleasure again. I'm currently knee-deep in the Lee Child Jack Reacher series and loving it! When I'm caught up there, I want to get some business reading in as well as more pleasure reading… a book a month is always my goal. I'm currently on book 13 of 2014 so that one worked out!
As always, I hope everyone had a happy, safe and successful 2015!
