The CragBaby

The new year is always a great time for reflection and goal setting.  Today I pulled out my 2008 goal document to analyze what I achieved and which marks I missed completely this past year.

I can honestly say 2008 was one of my happiest years.  I finished up my first full time job (moving it into a part time position for my climbing road trip), I traveled a lot (the below map showing where I visited in 2008), but mostly the transition into a family-less life was one of the best decisions and the main reason for this year’s happiness.  Looking at my 2008 goals, I gladly noticed that I achieved many of the sights I had set… even surpassing one goal that I had initially thought impossible. =)

Over the last week I have created a plan for 2009, using my thoughts from my Last Lecture post.  I have always broken my goals into four different categories of personal, career, financial and fitness, and I’ve continued this structure for the upcoming year.  I’m not going to post all my goals online, but a good portion of them (in no particular order) are listed below:

Personal

• Roadtrip – The goal is to continue on my road trip through the end of March.  At that time, I would have been on the road for a total of 8 months, which is a “long enough” break from the real world job.
• Vegetarian Diet – I have never eaten a lot of meat, but this year I am going to live the vegetarian life.  The reasons are health related, focusing to see if I can finally hit a fitness and weight level I’ve been trying to achieve for years.  On top of this diet I am focusing on organic foods and cutting back my coffee and alcohol intake.
• Start Fresh – I have always wanted to start life off fresh, meaning selling all my belongings and seriously starting out new.  I plan on doing this when I get back to Salt Lake.  I want to sell my clothes, dishes, furniture and belongings and seriously just start out fresh in a new city. Why not?  When I packed up my belongings prior to this trip I noticed there was only two boxes that meant anything to me.  One contained all my travel and climbing guidebooks and journals.  The other contained momentos from these travels and/or good friends: a pot made by Sam, two wine bottles from Italy, sand dollar from Thailand, Guiness cup from Ireland, rocks from various climbing destinations, wood cup carved by Jed, etc.  I want to take these two boxes and rid myself of the rest.  Afterwards I will create a new (hopefully different) minimalist life somewhere else.
• Learn French – I have a real hard time with languages, but I am trying again.  For the past month I have been working through a French book and a actively listening to cds.
• Volunteer – Last year I did real well on focusing on this goal.  I would like to continue to volunteer weekly, even while I am on the road; plus I would like to see if I can implement some type of social awareness into my next career position.
• Reading – I would like to read 25 books this year.
• Vacation Out of the Country – I have loved being on this domestic road trip, but I am antsy to get out of the states again.  I would like to take a couple weeks out of the country sometime this year.
• Domain – I own another domain and would like to do something with this site.  However, I want to design and code a good portion of it on my own.
• Stop Swearing – whew!  I can swear like the best of them, a trait I picked up while working as an intern on a trading floor in Chicago.  It is hard to buck this habit as these curse words just easily flow while climbing; however, it isn’t lady like and so I am going to stop this year.

Career

• New Job – I will need to find a new position upon going “home” and I am hoping to find one that I love as much as my old position.  This might be tricky in today’s market, but I am throwing out hope anyway.  I know exactly what I am looking for, now I just need to find that open position.
• Move to a New City – I would like to make the move away from Utah and to a new city where the culture focuses more on career than lifestyle.  Will I like it?  I don’t know.  Do I want to give it a try?  Definitely!
• Unix Knowledge – This goal isn’t really career oriented (but is somewhat applicable).  On this road trip I have been working on becoming more comfortable with the terminal window.  I am happy with my progress but want to feel confident this year.

Financial

• Savings – Every year I decide a set amount of money I would like to save for the year.  This year is no different.
• Public Equity Valuations – My current job does not require me to create public equity financial models, but it is a good practice.  I have set a goal of how many models I would like to create in my personal time as these models are completely applicable when looking for personal investments.

Fitness

• Climbing – for the past two years I have set a grade goal as numbers are extremely motivating for me (of course… I work in finance and love numbers!).  Yet, this year I notice that I am in a transition phase with my love of climbing.  Something about being on the road is getting me excited to work and focus on a career again.  I don’t want to give up climbing, but rather find a better median between work and the sport.  Rather than focusing on a grade or even on improvement, the climbing goal of 2009 is to maintain the strength I have developed while living on the road.  I feel like the range I climb right now allows me many options when going out to the rock.
• Yoga – yoga has been the sole reason for my ankle finally feeling better after a year and a half of aching.  I want to continue to practice yoga at least two times per week.
• Run ½ Marathon – I really have no desire to run another marathon, but I would like to participate in another ½.

What about you readers?  What are you hoping to achieve in 2009?  And how do you plan on going about achieveing your goals?

I’d been meaning to read the book The Last Lecture for the past few months, finally finding the time to do so on my trip.

Book:  The Last Lecture
Author: Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow
Review: The last lecture was written by a well known virtual reality Carnegie Mellon professor who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at the young age of 46.  In preparation of his looming death he presented his last lecture about the lessons he learned in life as a memento for his children. The last lecture was given on September 18, 2007 and Randy passed away on July 25, 2008.

I read the book and watched the below video. Having the actual book made for easy reference, but watching the video integrated the emotional, personal element to the discussed topics.

I had a whole handful of favorite points, but decided to only write about the main focus of the lecture here on the CragBaby blog.  (I will soon be posting some other thoughts, more business related, on the Wasatch Girl blog).

The lecture’s main topic was Really Achieving One’s Childhood Dreams.  Randy’s very first slide listed his childhood dreams with the rest of the slides augmenting how they were completed (or sometimes not completed) and ways to go about turning these dreams to reality (including such topics as being honest and educating oneself for the position desired, etc.)  Randy’s goals consisted of the following:

• Being in Zero Gravity – Completed this through an academia project, but creatively thought of a way to be included
• Playing in the NFL – Didn’t achieve, but professed to learn more by never actually making it
• Authoring an article in the World Book Encyclopedia – Completed. He was asked to write this article and can be found in the Virtual Reality Section.
• Being Capital Kirk – Never WAS Captain Kirk, but he met Captian Kirk
• Winning Stuff Animals – Completed
• Being a Disney Imagineer – Completed

His dreams were an impressive list and made me contemplate my life goals.  It actually seemed easy for me to rattle off my life goals as they haven’t changed much in the past years, but putting them in writing is always a good exercise. My goals and updates would be the following:

• Feel successful in my career – It is real important for ME to feel successful in my career, NOT to be a partner of someone who is successful. I want to feel like I personally can find a niche in my career.  So far I I have been quite fortunate to have my first job being in the venture capital industry and a position that I truly love. However, I have a long ways to go before feeling like my work is of up most importance and directly tied to a company’s / firm’s progress.
• Live Overseas – I would really like to achieve this goal this year.  I would love to live in Europe, preferably France, Spain, Italy or Switzerland.  However, I would also enjoy living in New Zealand or Hong Kong.
• Be able to fluently speak three languages – Currently I only speak English. =) Language seems to be real difficult for me to grasp as I have studied French and Italian in the past and feel like my little brain doesn’t retain.  However, for the past 3 weeks I have been actively studying French again.  In fact, you readers will soon see some elementary French blog posts in the near future.
• Continue to travel to a new destination annually – so far, so good.
• Complete a Master’s degree at a well respected school – I have not yet started into a master’s program because I feel like the appropriate timing for this will be in a couple years after I have another job under my belt.  Getting into a school of choice is a whole different issue. =)  I would love to go to a well respected school for the sole reason that I am simply a girl from the rural town of Helper, Utah.  Everything I have is a direct result from my work and determination and nothing to do with my family or their financial affairs… and I just want to see if I could work my way into a good school. =)
• Be involved with humanitarian efforts – This is actually a real important goal to me, but I haven’t done anything to even work towards it, besides volunteering at home.  At home I volunteered with Ten Thousand Villages (a fair trade organization) and donated platelets as often as I could (which were used in the local cancer hospitals).  However, I would ideally like to be more directly involved with UN affiliated programs or am actually real interested in Micro Finance Institutions such as Unitus and Kiva.  In fact, a move to the micro-financial realm would actually make sense career-wise for me.

It’s interesting to actually write out these goals as doing such resulted in two take-aways for me.

1. A couple goals that are of up-most importance to me, I have either not even started to work towards or have just recently started.  Why I am procrastinating?
2. My hobby of climbing, where I spend incredible amounts of time, is no where near my list of goals. Huh. It seems to be more of a hobby that I thoroughly enjoy, but not what I find to be important in life.  Perhaps I should soon tone down my time devotion in this area?

I would highly recommend reading or watching the Last Lecture.  And if you do, please let me know your thoughts.  Did you like it?  What were your favorite topics?  Why? Or, even if you don’t read the book, I would love to hear your life goals and the status of each.