It’s 2014. I can’t believe I’m writ­ing that. It seems like yes­ter­day that I pub­lished this post.

2013 was an inter­est­ing year. It was rid­dled with both suc­cess and fail­ure. Thank­ful­ly, the year end­ed on a high note. This was the first year that I accom­plished all of my goals, except one.

My goals for 2013 were:

1. Lose Weight
2. Pay Atten­tion to the Rela­tion­ships that Matter
3. Speak on Design
4. Work Less
5. Trav­el More

This is quite an accom­plish­ment! I spoke at two events last year: Min­neBar, and Blend Conf. I talked about the ben­e­fit of side projects, and peo­ple seemed to enjoy the talk.

In May, I quit my job at Rock­et Lift, and decid­ed to do Any­thin’ Goes full-time. This has been real­ly good for me. I’ve had the oppor­tu­ni­ty of work­ing with some great clients, and the flex­i­bil­i­ty of man­ag­ing my own sched­ule. I’ve also tried spend­ing less time in front of my desk, and more time with fam­i­ly, friends, or oth­er activities.

This year, I trav­eled a lit­tle too. I went to New York City in the sum­mer and the fall. I had the chance to walk Cen­tral Park the sec­ond time, which was absolute­ly beau­ti­ful, and the weath­er was per­fect. I went to Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na to speak, and San Diego, Cal­i­for­nia to vis­it my folks.

So what do I want to accom­plish in 2014? Here are my goals for this year:

1. Lose Weight
   I know this is a repeat, but I seri­ous­ly want to tack­le this. I know things that are bad for me, but I don’t real­ly know what I should be eat­ing. I want to ded­i­cate a bit more time into plan­ning my menu every week, which I think will allow me to gro­cery shop effec­tive­ly, and help me learn how to cook new dishes.
2. Learn Rails
   I know I can’t pos­si­bly learn Rails in one year, but I want to get very com­fort­able with it. At the moment, I can build a sim­ple appli­ca­tion with Rails, but I’d love to get into more com­plex things, and start imple­ment­ing best prac­tices like tests.
3. Col­lab­o­rate with Friends
   Adam Clark and I have been talk­ing about work­ing togeth­er on some­thing for the longest time. I’d love to final­ly take a project where we can work on it togeth­er. I’d also love to work with oth­er peo­ple. 2013 was full of projects that I worked on alone, I’d like to be in a posi­tion to assem­ble teams for projects this year.
4. Men­tor a Stu­dent
   Sim­i­lar to Lau­ra Kalbag, I’d like to guide a stu­dent through a project. I’m at a point where I can teach some­one how to man­age a project, and I should do my part in pay­ing that knowl­edge forward.
5. Take Work-cations
   Run­ning my own busi­ness allows me to work from any­where. There is no need for me to work from my stu­dio 80 per­cent of the year. I need to start tak­ing advan­tage of the flex­i­bil­i­ty I have.

Those are my five goals for 2014. What do you want to accomplish?