All posts in My Life

I arrived home from a braai at my folks place to find a text message from my fiance saying she needed me urgently, I quickly got into the house to find her the colour of a lobster and unable a breathe properly. We raced down to the Claremont ER and the doctor attended to her immediately (allergic reaction to fish) – tons of injections, I kakked myself when after 20 minutes things started to be going worse, but long story short we’re home and she’s just fine. Bad timing as she’s writing her law finals this week, the first one tomorrow, but what can you do.

I’d like to thank these folks for the kind words they sent on Twitter, it’s amazing how Twitter can provide such comfort during times that are otherwise fairly lonely and scary. Thank you to each and every one of you:

• SheBeeGee
• Katjie24
• TonySeifart
• AndrePentz
• FoodWineGuru
• MikeSharman
• ElanLohmann
• GeoffChisnall
• Reysbro
• SimplyDelishSA
• ByronRode
• MIrwin_za
• Andrew_Morgs
• AbbyMills
• Randomthoughtso
• BigFriendly

What an afternoon!

One of the items on my list of goals for 2012 is sleep and the fear thereof. I mentioned that it’s not really a fear per say but more a resistance, as if I was going to miss something if I went to sleep early. Now, I wanted to elaborate on this a little so it makes more sense as I’ve been asked by a few people to explain what I really mean.

It is not a fear of sleep, it’s a fear of missing something. What could I miss? Well the answer’s quite simple: knowledge. I work as a search engine specialist and it’s my passion so I like to absorb as much information as possible. I live in South Africa and SEO knowledge here is good, but it has nothing on the likes of what the American optimizers know. With that in mind, you can imagine that most of the tweeting done by American’s is done at a time when we should be asleep here in South Africa. You might argue that I could create lists on Twitter and revue them in my own time, and that’s correct, but what I forego is the ability to engage – SEO moves so quickly that jumping in 12 hours later just won’t work. This is a somewhat stretched example for the sake of explanation.

So anyway, back to the point: I sent a tweet out last night saying, bed earlier, up earlier, work earlier, home earlier – this is something I’m trying to subscribe to and if it means missing some of the latest news then so be it, simple because the scale of missing something vs heightened energy should always tilt towards heightened energy as it’s this that keeps us motivated and passionate, and it’s this that keeps us performing at our optimal. One of my colleagues mentioned yesterday that he used to work into the late hours every night and would wake up far later, but he changed this and since getting into the new swing he can confidently say that it’s a much better option and he feels better that he’s doing this now; he’s not the only person to say this, so I feel that I need to listen to others.

Another aspect of this comes from a discuss with a good friend of mine about living life in a circle – same thing every day and the fact that working until 18h00, getting home, making food, showering, watching a quick show and going to bed every single day creates a really un-stimulating routine, which for me (and him) is a daunting situation. This can be corrected through getting up earlier in the morning and doing more things before going to the daily appointment – This is probably why people gym, go for walks on the beach and so forth in the morning before work, yes?

Interesting topic, I could go on for a long time about different scenarios, ways to fix them and opinions people have given me, but I fear that this post is getting to a length that is long enough so I’m going to leave it there.

Would love to hear your opinion! :)

So today was officially my first day back at work in 2012 and it went a lot smoother than I had imagined. I started off the day by heading into work earlier than usual as I wanted to clock out a bit earlier so I could go through to town to meet a friend for a drink – it worked out really nicely and I’m hoping to shift my work hours from 09h30 – 18h00 to 08h30 to 17h00, especially during the summer months at least.

Started off the day capturing minutes to a meeting we had on Friday and commenced with working full speed ahead to nail my items on the list with the aim of leaving myself a few hours to deal with other matters that needed attention; believe it or not, I finished off the day with zero inbox, which was a great feeling.

During the course of the day I found a couple useful articles I wanted to share:

• What does retina display on desktops and laptops mean for developers
• 25 clever ideas to make your life easier
• Why 2012 will be the year of content marketing?
• Cape Town’s very own stompie-line!
• 6 mobile search engine optimization trends for 2012

In other news Fe and I have ordered Urban Khana (meals on wheels style) for the next few weeks as we’ve both got incredibly busy schedules and shopping/cooking just end up taking too much time. We had our first meal this evening and it was delicious – the standard’s been set high, I look forward to tomorrow’s meal.

So, good day all in all, the only thing I didn’t do was exercise, oops!

Last week I wrote a post where I reflected on 2011 a little and how my goals went for the year - I would score myself at 62.5% success, which isn’t too shabby when I go over the goals I set. Tonight I’m going to write down 10 goals that I came up with whilst sitting outside this evening at my outside blogging station ;)

In no particular order:

1. Launch Something – I’ve always been an entrepreneur at heart, always looking for the next thing to start and for many years I launched things continually, whether it was a site to make use of arbitrage, whether it was something useful for others or whether it was just something personal. Over the past few years I haven’t done too much of this, I’ve concentrated on service, planning and forecasting, but this year I will launch something. Back in 2009, Mike Stopforth wrote a blog post entitled, Ten (more) young South African digital citizens to watch, and when I read that post I felt honored, but I also felt obligated. It’s 3 years later and although I’ve grown leaps and bounds, bought a house in a trendy area, drive my dream car and created a lifestyle that I’ve always dreampt of, I still feel that I haven’t hit the mark yet, there’s still something I need to fulfill and I have an idea what it is, I just need to concentrate on it and refine it – it’s this very something that I will locate, and launch.
2. Budget - Over the past 4-5 years of my life I’ve put literally all my concentration into money, so much so that when I bought my (well, our, my fiance and mine) house I didn’t even touch my savings – Please don’t read that the wrong way, I’m merely emphasizing that I’ve worked myself to the bone as everything has revolved around money. Whilst I’ve done this, I’ve stopped budgeting and keeping track of my expenses and this has been incredibly stupid, as someone who is “clearly looking forward to space travel, so that he can find others like him in the galaxy” you’d imagine I’d have the intelligence to know that too many people lose it when they lose sight of being careful and calculating! So, 2012 is going to change that, I want to spend less money, I want to track my expenses and I ultimately want to move any excess money I might have into more investment accounts. At the moment I have several investment accounts, but they are not wise investments and this will change. I will be seeking the assistance of an accountant and second financial planner to assist me in better management of my money. Right, enough about work, business and money!
3. Slow Down - If there’s anything I’ve learnt over the years it’s that I need to slow down. What I mean by this is to just be more conscious of what I’m doing – I’m horribly OCD, when I go outside for a smoke, I neaten the remotes, I straighten the pillows on the couch, and I make sure that the ashtray is positioned correctly (amongst other things) – this needs to stop. I’m not diagnosed as being OCD so it’s something that can be corrected if I’m just conscious and I persevere. This is a big one for me, it exhausts me and I can feel the toll it has on me so I’m going to put this into effect immediately. Sure, it’s part of what makes me, me, but it’s not crucial. This leads me to my next point:
4. Sleep - I need to fear sleep less! I see sleep as a weakness, I always have, and it’s not the case, without sleep we don’t rebuild our bodies, we don’t energize and we don’t allow ourselves to work optimally during the day. I’m capable of working full pace with just 4 hours of sleep – that’s my usual, but this year I want to sleep more. My gorgeous fiance is a week away from finishing her law and psychology degree and has started a full time job which requires her to be up by 7am (I’m up 9am). That said, she needs to be in bed at 11pm latest, so I want to start being in bed earlier and rising earlier – I feel that this will make a big difference to my life from so many angles. This will more than likely the one of the hardest items on my list! What will help is the next goal:
5. Cycling / Exercise - This was on my list last year and I slacked horribly during the year but ended on an amazing note – losing several kilograms, lots of cm’s and just feeling so much better – I honestly don’t know if I would have managed November and December if I’d not pulled myself together and got going! So, from tomorrow I’ll be back on my bike every evening and will continue to follow my home made recipes for exercise.
6. Socialize - Another item on my list from 2011, and although I feel that I achieved this goal last year, I’d like to ramp it up a little more. I’ve said this a couple times this year already.. 2012: balance. That’s the aim, to balance my work and personal life more – I’ve met some incredible people over the past few months and have built excellent bonds with the fantastic guys that I work with, and have enjoyed many great outings with all of them, this must continue – altius et latius.
7. Reduce Noise – Story of my life! For those of you who work online for a living, you’ll know all about noise – tweets, tags, pings, pongs, etc, etc – Never a minute without something beeping on a device requiring your attention! Between my iPhone, iPad and Mac, I feel like there’s never a moment when something isn’t beeping at me and this is going to be reduced. I’m going to remove myself from some of the social networks I use, such as FourSquare, which I am really gaining very little from and feel that it might be best to just exclude myself. I will search for other networks to remove myself from and will go through all my applications with the aim of turning off push notifications and the likes. Reduce noise, now!
8. Deeper SEO – The amount of Search Engine Optimization knowledge that I’ve gained in 2011 is second to none – I honestly don’t think I could have learnt more, I’ve read and read and read, and implemented and implemented and implemented, and tweaked and tweaked and tested and tested, on and one! I’ve loved every minute and I have learnt so much, there’s no better feeling than learner something and pushing towards being an expert. This year I want to refine my SEO skills, not necessarily away from knowing more, but rather towards aggregating all the information I’ve learnt into more strategic avenues. I want to go deeper into SEO, dig out fundamentals and set some of my own practices in place for others to learn from and talk about.
9. Garden More – It’s almost a year since I got my first bonsai tree and through this passion I’ve found that I really enjoy gardening. I’ve spent countless days in the garden planting, thinking and creating, and this gives me such a wonderful stillness within and I want more. So, 2012 is going to see me up earlier on Saturdays and in the garden before the summer heat hits, working slowly on the garden, enjoying the sound of the fountain and just enjoying the creation of something beautiful and natural.
10. Blog Personally – Arg, this goal seems to come up almost every year! I started iMod as a personal blog to engage with friends and build a name for myself – it worked incredibly well, so why did I stop with all the personal stuff? Seriously.. I don’t know! What I do know is that I want to inject my personal life onto iMod more this year, I want to share what I’m experiencing and by that I don’t mean amazing things I found online only, but amazing things I’ve experienced outside of this Internet world. I’d also like to introduce a podcast of sorts, I like the idea of recording my thoughts and sharing them :)

So there you have it, 10 goals for 2012 – I’ll probably add a few more as I go, it’s taken me about a week to come up with this list and I know there are a few I’ve missed as I didn’t write them down, so you might spot a couple more here over the next few days.

I really should be working on Goal 4 right now, but I feel inspired sitting out here in the cool air with my gorgeous kitties, Calla and Bella.

So, 2011′s over and 2012 is upon us – Happy New Year everyone!

I have to admit, 2011 went incredibly quickly and from what I’ve heard and read, a great deal of people are happy that it’s over, seems to have been a really tough year for a lot of people. Was interesting to look back at the post I wrote literally this time last year.

2011 was good for me, I achieved most, if not all, of the goals I set myself, but that’s not to say it was an easy year, I certainly worked incredibly long hours and faced some difficult challenges, but I made it to the end and I’m pleased with the results. If I can maintain the momentum through the next 365 days then I’ll be really happy with myself. I haven’t taken the time to sit and really think about goals for the year, but I’ll certainly do this over the next few days and will put up a post with them.

Last year I put the following goals out there:

• Work on health - I did alright with this, the start of the year I conscious but as I started working too much I quickly lost the momentum, but thanks to the Sleek Geek Challenge I managed to get into a great routine, which will be picked up again on the 15 Jan 2012 once the festive season is over.  I bought a mountain bike during 2011 and have used it a lot – the results have been motivating.
• Tanning – Failed on this one horribly, I’ve loved to be tanned and all, but I just find myself preferring to be out of the sun – too many bad things come from the sun and I think I’m just better without spending hours lying under it. Driving a cabriolet does give me plenty of sun though, pity it’s not legal to drive without a top on ;)
• Engage locally - Last year I said this, “There are a number of really talented local web players in our industry and although I’ve been highly annoyed with a lot of them because of the arrogance that’s grown and the continual cleverly phrased tweets used to show off, I’ve decided that I will no longer care about those things and try phase them out of my mind and rather engage with these people, supporting their initiatives and hopefully sharing great information.” and I have to be honest – I didn’t bother, the circle jerk is too annoying and I refuse to put on a fake face to fit in, like most of them do. So, ya, I’ve scouted out new people from the local industry who aren’t caught up in the clicks and have enjoyed building strong relationships on trust.
• Financially – Well, I did it – I bought a house in Harfield Village without touching my savings, which is exactly what the aim was.
• Social - I did well on this one too, I had many braai’s, attended some great events and in general bounced up the social life a lot; this one’s on my 2012 list as well, it makes all the difference.
• Work - #winning
• Blogging - During 2011 I wanted to do more personal blogging and I, unfortunately, didn’t do a great job, or at least didn’t get to where I wanted to be. It takes a fair amount of time to put something into place that allows me to write about my personal life in a way that people can follow the journey. I know because this is how iMod started and the recipe isn’t simple. That being said, I reckon in 2012 I’ll make a plan to re-write the recipe.
• Fishing - One thing I wanted to do in 2011 was take more trips down to the dams and rivers to fish, and although I made it to the dam a number of times, I started to fade towards the end of the year, which is something I need to fix! I need to take a trip during 2012 to somewhere incredible to fish as well as tackle the rivers more often. All in all, I definitely fished more this year than any other year, which is an achievement – bring on the outdoors \o/
• Weekends Away - #winning
• Driving - Haha, I managed this for 6 months and I promise you that it made a huge difference to my life, but as the year got busier, I slacked off. This will need to be on my 2012 list too.
• Hobby - I didn’t manage to get the aquarium going due to space constraints, but I did evolve my bonsai collection in a big way and have put more time into gardening in general; I also started cycling, so I did fairly well on this point now that I think about it.
• Studying - Sigh, didn’t succeed here; I need to enroll, finish my degree and then search for something new to study, I keep missing the registration dates!!

So that’s some feedback on the 2011 year, next list will be for 2012, but I need some time to think about that still :)