Looking back

I finally did it and finished this blog challenge. It took almost one month but I’m very happy that I continued. I liked this experience and all 14 challenges but among all I liked the most the challenge from Day 6, the one with “Identify your Ideal Business Model”. I liked it because I reflected on how I really want to live my life from now on. It was not something new but writing a post made it a little bit stronger. It is the end of this challenge, but not the end of my blogging experience. The best way to say it is using Søren Kierkegaard words:

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Explore the city

The first thing we do when we are in a new place is to take long walks. No plan, no time check, just walk around and explore. When we get hungry, we choose a nice place outside and enjoy the meal. This is so different than our day to day life that simple things like having a coffee makes our day.

We return home and our life goes back to business as usual but when we want to feel like in vacation, we do the same. We take long walks and have a coffee or a beer outside. Our city center is very beautiful and in Museum Square we really feel like in vacation. There are a lot of places where we can stay outside and relax and a quite a lot of people do the same. We are tourists in our home town.

It’s time to relax

I want to do a lot of things, I plan my entire day and often I forget to relax. It’s no surprise that I feel stressed and tired after a while. A change is needed and a good one will be to start the day a little bit better than I’m doing now. It’s time to fuel my body and one way is to do some stretching in the morning. I’m already doing exercise with weights but I will move that in the evening and make room for stretching in the morning. The change is also good because I got used with what I’m doing now and it became kind of boring. Let’s see if it works.

A good morning routine can make the difference for the rest of the day. It is much better to learn from others than to try everything on my own. How do you start your day? What makes you happy?

Goodbye, stuff!

I like magazines, especially those with cars like auto-bild. I buy them and after a while I have magazines all over the place and this drives me crazy. I don’t like mess but I’m doing it. Every time I need something important and I search through the magazines, I say that I’ll do some cleanup. Of course that will happen next time and not now. Now, I have something else to do. Luckily there is a very simple solution. Do you know how eat an elephant? Piece by piece. This is how I will “eat” my magazines clutter beast.

Time on my own

I moved in Cluj-Napoca 20 years ago when I studied at Babeș-Bolyai University. I cannot count how many times I walked on Eroilor street (see the picture) going somewhere. Few years ago, on a day off, I realized that I never saw the windows and the balconies from those buildings and that’s a pity because are very beautiful. I was always in a hurry to go somewhere.

What I would do with MY time? One of the things I enjoy doing lately is to have a coffee outside and just don’t care how much time I stay there. Just  me, my espresso, my wife and some friends, relaxing, discussing, admiring what’s around us. Yesterday I had one of these moments in Bistrița and it was a perfect moment before our way back to Cluj-Napoca.

Life doesn’t need complicated things to be beautiful, simple moments like this make it amazeballs.

Go far, go together

This is the first day from this blog challenge when I’m clueless. And the reason is simple, I’m planning to launch my own site but after this challenge so if I’m not doing anything yet, it is hard to outsource something. There is one thing that I’ll keep in mind and that is to document what I’m doing and how I’m doing it so when I’ll need to outsource something, the person who’s gonna help me will know how. I read before part of work the system and at that time I didn’t know where to apply those ideas but now I know.

Productivity systems and tools

I wanted to write this post yesterday but I had the most unproductive morning since I started this challenge. I was not able to find a proper image for this so in the end I created my own. I don’t really like it and I think I have an idea for the next day challenge.

The first system I will use will help me organizing the content for my future site. First I need a way to prepare the content and google docs is the best candidate. I’m already using it, it is free and available everywhere I have an internet connection. Additional resources like images will be uploaded in google drive, next to the document with the work in progress content. In this way everything will be in one place and easy to find. I also need to keep track of my progress and I will use trello for this purpose. It’s really intuitive, visual and I’m familiar with it. Besides being available online and usable within a browser, these tools have also native mobile applications, at least on android, and I can use them from that platform also.

I think it is enough for the beginning, tools should be simple and helpful and not staying in the way.

Preparing for the journey

My journey it’s about to start and I have to figure it out what I need to make it. In the last year I traveled few times and every time I prepared a list before I actually started to pack. It is much easier to make the bag if I have the list and I’m sure that I’ll not forget something important.

Today’s challenge is to identify three major goals for the rest of the year and put them in calendar. The first one and the most important is to spend time with my family and friends on Christmas. Preparing all the things takes time and having few days off in that period is crucial for me. The next one is launching my blog as hosted wordpress site and that will be in late October. After I’ll finish this challenge I’ll choose where I’ll host the blog, I’ll buy the domain and prepare it. It’s my first site that I’ll launch and because my spare time is not that much, late October is a realistic target. The last but not the least is to take Java 8 SE Associate Certification exam. Being certified is not mandatory for success in my industry but preparing for an exam  helps me in learning and understanding latest things in java language. This will be in late November.

Now that my list is complete it’s time to pack and make my journey.

Straight ahead

I like new things, I’m getting easily enthusiastic when I have the chance to be involved in something new and shiny. I start working on it and after a while something new and even shinier appears and I involve in that too. I started this blog challenge a few months ago, I wrote until Day 5 and then something else appeared.

I already realized that I need to focus on only one thing and get it done. I changed all my priorities, I made sure I have time each day and I started it again. After I’ll finish this challenge I’ll focus on my thing for this year and that is to move from wordpress.com to a hosted wordpress site and provide great content for programmers.

When I started this challenge, I did not saw all the benefits. I realized that will help me on writing but now I also see that it helps me to clarify on what I want, it helps me to focus and makes me look straight ahead.

Work-Life Fusion

I’m a lucky person. I’m healthy, I’m happy in my marriage, I work with great people and I live in a country that’s part of European Union. I do not want to change anything in my life, only to slightly adjust it.

Last year I read Jurgen Appelo’s post Work-Life Fusion, not Work-Life Balance  and I realized that this is the kind of lifestyle I would like to have. I will still do what I’m doing now but I will have more control over my time.

Let’s get back to today’s challenge, identifying the business model to support my desired lifestyle. I like to work with people, so I would continue to provide software services like I’m doing now. On the other hand I also like to work alone and choose when to do it, where and when I do it. This is what Natalie names it residual revenue stream and on this I have to focus on now to identify what I could do. The first thing that I’ll do after I’ll finish this challenge is to move from wordpress.com to a hosted wordpress solution and continue blogging there. I have no idea now on how things will evolve but I have no reason to be worried about. I will be at least a better writer than I am now.

Yesterday I read 11 lessons about success from Mark Twain. One of them concludes perfectly this post: “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”