That’s it folks, in less that 24 hours another year will be over and put in the history books. 2014 was a pretty good year for many of us. It had highs, lows, and in betweens but 2015 is going to be a big year. I can only speak for myself but as far as I can see it there are some quite exciting days ahead. I’ve already setup some goals, challenges, and experiences that will take shape in 2015. There will be some additions to the site and my reach to everyone, more photos, more writing and special features, and stories from my experiences. There are exciting times on the horizon and I plan to make 2015 an extraordinary year. In the immortal words of Dr. Suess;
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go… ~ Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!
Get the business out of the way and then I can talk about some of the fun stuff. First off my reach has been sporadic at best when sharing my writing and photography online, primarily through Facebook. This is not the best way to get my content to the readers, I’ve talked to a few other writers and entrepreneurs nearly all of them said the best thing they ever did for their site or personal brand was to start a newsletter to get to their die hard fans. Not only have I been told this I have also read and heard other people say the same thing, I’ve spent nearly a month pondering and doing research on whether or not this will work, I’ve concluded it’s the best approach. Email is just like receiving snail mail, we love to receive except for when it’s junk. Our inboxes are far too crowded with junk and it’s always nice to get something cool in it from time to time. It simply has become too difficult to assure that I am reaching the most amount of people especially when you take into account Facebook’s constantly changing news feed algorithms. Unless you are actually looking for something on Facebook you often will miss a ton of stuff. This is where the newsletter comes in, on average you would receive 3 emails a week. Two of the posts will be coming in on Monday and Wednesday, usually the evening, and will just be a notification that I have posted a new blog article. The third one will come on either Friday night or Saturday night, I haven’t quite decided on this yet, but this email will have exclusive non-website content, this will be a “behind the eyes” look into what inspired me that week; music, blogs, articles, books, movies, tv, documentaries, photographs, etc. Anything that brought me a sense of awe and inspiration is what I will do my best to pass on to you.
Second part of the site and personal brand additions will be mixed media content. Not 100% positive on how the hell I’m going to do this or what exactly I want to do but I want my site to be less static and more varied in the way in which people consume my content. That means vlogs, how-to articles w/pictures, how-to videos (maybe), inspiration quotes paired with beautiful images, and hopefully more as it comes to me. Like I said not 100% what or how I’m going to do most of it but I think it could make things a bit more fun.
The last change or addition that will take place with site will be photo prints. As of right now I do have prints for sale basically just for the hell of it. They were selected from a vote I did a few months ago so all of them were voted to be the more popular prints by fans. As much as I love to have cash in my pocket, I’m not doing photography for that reason at all, I’m doing it for fun and to share it with people who also love photography. With that said I’m going to be doing something different, something most people (if any) don’t do. With every image I post I will be adding a high resolution copy available to download, this version of the image will also be print ready, what that means is that you can print my images yourself and making it more affordable for you. The images will all still be licensed under Creative Commons (read the licensing details here). I only ask of you a few things:
They’re all pretty straight forward, I don’t have to do any of this I choose to because I believe great content should be shared and viewed by as many people as physically possible.
Couple other side notes and goals for 2015. I’m starting my own business! To be more accurate at least 2 businesses. They’re not going to be massive startups, the next facebook, or anything like that what they will be are microbusinesses. These will be small scale roll outs of products and services, this is going to help fund the more exciting things and allow me more freedom to pursue the things that make me happy. One of the businesses has the potential to grow into something very important I just have no idea how to launch it but that’s the fun of the project.
Ok, thanks for holding on and sticking with me. Here is the fun news. I’m going to France! 2015 is going to be filled with travel and worldly experiences the top of which will be a month long trip to France and most likely neighboring countries. I’ve hinted at it or mentioned it in passing but this is the first time that I have publicly announced my trip. I’m planning on this to be an exciting moment in my life. It started off as a whim that was never really meant to be committed to, however, I’ve spent too much time talking about it and telling people about so now I’m committed to it, it will be happening. The plan will be spend a month in Paris and travel a bit throughout the region and experience different cultures and life. So that’s all very exciting and I’m quite giddy about it. Expect tons of photos and stories about the experience.
In the other realm of travel, I’ve set a goal to visit all 50 states by the time I’m 30. Currently I’m at 2 because I wiped the slate clean and started over, this year I’m planning on knocking out 15 states minimum. Each state I will be spending at least 24 hours in and taking as many photos as possible. I’ve got a lot of work to do to reach all of these states but it should be an adventure worth taking. If you live in another state and want to meet up send me a message and we can coordinate something fun.
There’s a ton more stuff that I want to accomplish in 2015 but this has already become a bit too wordy and long winded. 2015 is going to be an extraordinary year filled with excitement, experience, and awesomeness by the truck load. In the new year I won’t be taking part in any resolutions, resolutions are often broken, I will instead make commitments to the things that will add value to my life and others around me. I hope that you will join in 2015 for some exciting times and hopefully we can meet up and do something fun. I wish everyone a safe, happy, and extraordinary new year!