GreyMatterIdeas

Based on a blog post by Wil Wheaton, I undertook an ambitious project last year. The goal was to do something creative every day…for a year. It could be anything, as long as it was creative. Similar to Nanowrimo and rpmchallenge, the goal was simply to do more, to attempt more. If you made a game out of it, you would be more apt to do it. The end result is that you produced more creative things. It made a certain amount of sense. Plus, it lined up with what my 3 words were for that year.

My 3 words for 2011 were Change, Create and Certify. Change was: change my station, change my health, change my career path. I did Change. I stopped drinking Sunkist soda in the morning, swapping it out for sweet tea instead (slightly more healthy…). I also started on changing my career path. I started more code related things.

Create was done as well. The year of Creativity helped fuel that endeavor. Results to follow.

Certify didn’t go so well. The intention was to certify my skills by passing the E-Commerce test, PHP and Database Design tests. None of that happened.

That’s ok, though. My 3 words for 2012 should fix those issues. (That post is tomorrow…)

Back to the Year of Creativity…

Because Chris Brogan (and others, I’m sure) say to measure your goals, I kept track of the Year. The summary is this: I missed 27 days out of 365. Not too shabby. I did a TOTAL of 554 things, averaging out to 1.5 things a day, so I don’t feel so bad about the 27 days. I broke them down to 4 categories: Code (including web design), Music, Writing (to include blog posts like this one) and Misc (Video, photos etc.)

Code had 107 events, Music had a whopping 273 events, Writing had 119 and Misc had 55 events.

In fairness, one of the 27 days missed was due to illness and another was due to a new job. Still, not too shabby. Was it a worthy project? Absolutely. Would I do it again this coming year? Nope. Keeping track wasn’t fun. I will continue the spirit of the project going forward, though. I just won’t document it. Next year is the Year of Music and Code (or the Year of Code and Music…haven’t decided which way sounds better…), so I will continue the spirit of this past year.

Part of my goals (see tomorrow’s blog post) is to write a tech book or two and release 2 CD’s- one for The Robot Attack and the other for Agents of M * A * D. Come back in August or September for a listen.

See you on the flip side…