Life’s little moments of success can pass us by so easily. If we don’t track the things we’re proud of, we lose track of how far we’ve come. Steve Kamb’s Epic Quest of Awesome inspired me to build my own Epic Life Quest. I keep track of achievements, and after five significant ones, I level up. Here’s what I completed this last round:
- Ride the Isle of Man TT mountain course – it’s a well-regarded, scary fast race through one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen. On my Sept 2018 visit, I took a morning to ride along on a motorcycle through the route. Completed Sept 2018.
- Acquire an existing web site – I had never really been in the market for one, but I had the chance to buy a site that lined up well with a few experiments that I wanted to run. More info on this soon. Completed Nov 2018.
- Get our November 2018 Black Friday sale over $500K – I aimed for this in 2017, but I couldn’t quite pull it off, ending up at $439K. This was the year I pushed it over this big round number. Completed Nov 2018.
- For 5 years straight, take 2 weeks off per year with Erika. We started this in 2014 with a 2-week trip to Tulum to burn up the holiday weeks where nobody wants to book consultants. It was a fantastic experience. Completed Dec 2018.
- Helicopter onto a glacier – Erika and I flew in about a week early for SQL Saturday Iceland and this was lovely and totally awe-inspiring. Completed March 2019.
2019 is a kind of pay-ourselves-back year, mostly traveling to fun places at fun times of year to be there. When Ernie was diagnosed with cancer, Erika & I cut most of our travel to spend more time with her. With her gone, Erika doesn’t want to get another dog – we really love to travel together, and having a dog makes that a lot more difficult. So now we’re back to our nomadic lifestyle, with 2019 trips lined up to Paris, Israel, Belgium, Dallas, Miami, Orlando, South Dakota, Utah, Sacramento, Isle of Man, Netherlands, and Vegas. Because of that, I probably won’t check off any work-related tasks in 2019, and I’m comfortable with that.