Every year, on my birthday, I think about what I’ve done in the previous year and what I’d like to do in the next year. This was an awesome year for me, and it will be hard to beat. There were a lot of awesome adventures. I think that in transparency there is honesty, and I’d like to hold myself more accountable publically….this post is to motivate myself to do better next year.

I focused on doing things that I was afraid of, or that people told me were hard/impossible to do. Getting out of my comfort zone. My hit rate wasn’t as important as number of times at bat. I took the approach that if I wasn’t failing I wasn’t pushing myself hard enough.

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
― Ernest Hemingway

The point of all this is I’m trying to better myself. I changed a lot from 33-34, and I believe I was a better person this year because of those changes. I believe I’m a better me than I was a year ago, and this year every day I’m going to work to make this true next year as well. I almost have a trend 😉

Thank You Friends!

I had an awesome year thanks to very awesome friends. I have concrete evidence that the quality of your life is reflected in the quality of your friends. I couldn’t have done these things without all of you Vicki Bell, Josh Green, Christian Brink, Hal Logan, Jon Baker, Adam Dimuzio, Courtney Perigo, Jonathan Bush, Jeannine Lyons, Connie Hunt, Rob Mazur, Antonio Vaughn, Eric Cobb, Kathryn Thompson, Rob Farrington, Amanda Grelock, Paul Nakata, Dad, Mike, Glen and many others.

You’ve been great to me, if I haven’t been awesome to you, let me know and we’ll fix that =)

In no particular order, here’s what I did this year:

Personal

• Made a flag/coat of arms AKA “Tedsylvania”
  • Do you have a flag?
• Claimed a small island in the name of Tedsylvania
• Camped, explored and snorkled the Dry Tortugas and Fort Jefferson
• Made first World Record attempt
  • Still working on getting Guiness Book of World Records to confirm this. (Bucket List Attempt)
• Started learning to cook (this never really ends, right?)
• Became a vegetarian
• Made up new term- Adventure vegan
• Became the world’s first adventure vegan 😉
  • Recieved many weird looks.
• Ate a bat in Lutz with Terry Hartup
• Discovered quinoa, setan, tempeh, acai and kale
• Explored NYC for the first time with Vicki Bell
• Visited Empire State Building
  • Bucket List
• Signed my credit card as “Bad Motherfucker”.
  • No one has called me on it.
• Drank 21 year old Scotch
  • Bucket List
• Kayaking in Crystal River
• Grew an epic beard
• Snorkeling with Manatees
• Safari in Africa
  • Saw lions at the kill
    • Bucket List
  • Freaking cheetas!
  • Ate crocodile and ostrich
  • Drank where Hemingway drank
  • Amazed at the snows of Kilamanjaro
    • Bucket list
  • Visited my fifth continent!
    • Visiting all 7 is on my Bucket List
• Returned to The Fairy Castle of Tedsylvania!
• Started running – Couldn’t run half a mile
• Ran my first event Ragnar Relay Florida Keys 2012!
• Ran my first solo event- Keys 100 Ultra Marathon (50 Mile Ultra Marathon)
  • Added to and Checked off Bucket List this year
• Lost about 32 lbs.
• My team took second place in Startup Weekend Tampa (Splik.it)
• Went to my first professional baseball game ever.
• Got tossed out of a bar and almost in a brawl.
• Pranked a friend on vacation.
• Zombies Are Everywhere
  • Coordinated internationally distributed team to create a product from an idea in less than 10 hours of effort.
  • Started the funding process on Kickstarter.
• Started to learn programming via Code Academy
  • 737 points, 515 lessons and 35 achievements so far
  • Javascript, HTML, CSS. Soon Python
• Applied to be an Astronaut Candidate
  • Leaving the planet is a Bucket List item
• Created no small amount of miscellaneous mischeif and mayhem
• Focused on sharpening the saw

Tyler

I’m thankful every day for my little clone. He’s sneaky, mischevious, impish, and clever. I love him for being very much like me of course. He’s in a very awesome stage; big enough to do things on his own, but still young enough that I’m not so uncool he can’t hang out with me. It’s going so fast. I love him to pieces.

Here are a few of the many things we did this year:

• Swim lessons!
• Self dressing!
• Exploring the trails on several parks and finding out of the way secret places
• Rockets!
• Movie nights
• Robot Cake for his birthday thanks to (KathyLovesCake)
• Ginormous pancakes
• Airheads
• Fall Festival at Hunsader Farms
• Easter Egg hunt
• Water Slides
• Thumbs Wars
• Hide and Go Seek
• Mohawk!
• Rock, Paper, and Scissors
• Secretly singing silly songs in the car together
• Reading books (and mostly paying attention!)
• Camping trip with all of the kids
  • Making smores
  • Watching stars!
• The beach, the beach, the beach

Books I read this year:

1. Design for Hackers
2. Made to Stick
3. The Black Swan
4. Steve jobs
5. A Wise Man’s Fear
6. The Lean Startup
7. Design Patterns
8. The Pragmatic Programmer
9. Waltzing with Bears
10. Peak
11. Emotional Equations
12. Stick to Comics Monkey Brain!
13. Rule #1
14. Power Foods
15. Clean Start
16. Heavy Hitter Selling
17. How to Win Friends and Influence People (again)
18. Three Feet From Gold
19. Outliers
20. Clean Food
21. Engine 2 Diet

Work

Day Job:

What a team! What results! Not sure what else I can share publically =)

Not My Day Job:

My longtail bets are working out swimmingly, and I continue to profit from being a smartass. I’ve also spent some time working on a new project that may soon go viral.

Kanji-A-Day.com- My first SaaS product still performs very well with almost no work. My funnel feeders (Organic Google, RSS feeds,free email) have grown substantially on their own. I’ve only done a little split testing with conversion pages and have significantly improved conversions. Some customers are completing their fourth year as paying subscribers. I have a simple idea that should drive even more revenue with very little work. Win.

Tampa Bay Investment Alliance (aka the investment club) is chugging along and I feel that I’m becoming a much better investor after talking through so many investment opportunities. I’m looking forward to another profitable year picking investments with people who are much smarter than I.

Writing it all down, it seems like a lot for a year. I hope I can continue the momentum and continue to have a very interesting life. Thank you all again for being a part of this awesome adventure!