The 2014 100

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Last updated on February 20th, 2024 at 02:39 am

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2014 started on a tired note.

After somehow staying up ’til midnight on the 31st (largely with childless friends), we left shortly after to put heads to bed. But while others might have taken the 1st as a day of rest, I managed to cram in

• driving a rickety Zipvan for the first time crosstown to pick a glider up for the nursery;
• watching the season premiere of BBC’s Sherlock—”The Empty Hearse”—which gladdened me to see Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson back in action; and
• winning a $700 Nokia Lumia 1020 phone for $188 at the HoHoTO Hangover Auction

2014’s first day wasn’t impossible, but 2013’s end as a string of sleepless nights with deadlines, infant tantrums and rules that change with every passing moment was finally starting to take its toll. Parenthood is trying—in an ideal world, I’d have posted this yesterday.

Parenthood is anything but ideal, though—it changes your life, yes, but you can’t forget yourself in the process—it’s why I’m still making a list of 100 personal goals.

Oh, this again?

In 2013, I took a page from my friend’s book and wrote 100 things I wanted to do that year. I didn’t know whether I’d get them all done, or—in all honesty—whether I even wanted to do them all, but it seemed like a good way to start the year.

I successfully wrapped The 2013 100 up despite Icepocalypse, a busy Christmas season and a cough that just wouldn’t quit—but you don’t just have a personal victory and call it a day!

The entire point of new year’s resolutions is to show you’ve learned your lesson and desire to change.

So this year, I wanted to give myself attainable goals—goals that will make my life better but won’t need a million dollars, genie’s lamp or infinite time to do. 2013 showed me that much can change in the course of a year—your priorities change; your life situation can wind up totally different; you come out with altered views and expectations from the ones you had on January 1^st.

I’m no fool—with a child in tow, I have my responsibilities. The things I need to do as a father trump almost anything else short of keeping myself alive to take care of him. But when DoomzToo is older, I expect him to have dreams. I want him to want something from his life, and do all that I can to help him get there. My generation is the one that realized that you’re going to lead a miserable life if you keep following someone else’s dream — his will be the generation to live their lives for their dreams as the nature of work and global infrastructure grow along with them.

And it’s as the old question goes:

How can I expect my child to follow his dreams if I didn’t do the same myself?

So here are 100 goals. Here are 100 baby steps mapped out to get me closer to where I want to go. On January 1^st, 2014, I looked back and saw a man who’d done some of his goals, but didn’t quite know what he wanted out of his life. He found that a third of his goals were things the thought he should be doing but ultimately brought him no joy. On January 1^st, 2015, I want to look back and feel like I just lived the first year of the rest of my life.

So without further ado…

The 2014 100

1. Find a regular supply of Kraft Magic Moments pudding so I can relive my childhood
2. Attend NXNEi
3. Hit up SXSW
4. Attend the World Domination Summit
5. Attend the North American International Automotive Show as a guest of Ford Canada
6. Open an RESP for DoomzToo
7. See my optometrist…
8. …in order to change to another optometrist closer to my house.
9. Find a way to change my Twitter handle from @doomzTO to @CaseP
10. Get a corporate plan for my phone
11. Give Sarah her “secret present”
12. Get Fish ‘n’ Chimps up and running
13. Be part of making an app
14. Enter more blogging awards
15. Babyproof Casa de Palmer in preparation for when his lordship DoomzToo starts walking
16. Finish the Casey Palmer Facebook page
17. Get Justin to come over and teach me how to cook the basics so I can fend for myself in the event of a Zombie Apocalypse
18. Try axe throwing
19. Try paintball
20. Go to a shooting range
21. Include a portfolio section on CaseyPalmer.com
22. Get new glasses
23. Have less drafts on CaseyPalmer.com at the end of 2014 than I’d started with
24. Win at least one design contest
25. Create one piece a month for The Hooray Collective
26. Guest blog more often
27. Get my G license
28. Get my old content sorted out and make CaseyPalmer.com the decade-long story it’s supposed to be
29. Try running a podcast to chat with people who want to share a message
30. Get my YouTube game on
31. Get more involved in the stock market, including buying some solid stocks for DoomzToo
32. Figure out why my site’s been suffering so much downtime and lag lately
33. Figure out why our Wi-Fi’s been so spotty at home
34. Find a good family Halloween costume
35. Transfer the files from Sarah’s old IDE hard drive to a SATA hard drive
36. Toboggan my heart out
37. Visit more of Canada
38. Create something amazing with Wolfram Mathematica
39. Get fit
40. Get a glider for the nursery
41. Create some infographic tools that’ll help people
42. Buy a bike
43. Overhaul all the files on my computer
44. Finally understand politics
45. Write family Christmas cards for friends and neighbours, or copy my in-laws and write an annual Christmas letter
46. Keep in touch with my grandparents
47. Finish the family tree to the best of my ability
48. Clean up all the clutter on my desk
49. Submit at least one design to Threadless
50. Go to TEDxToronto
51. Read my candygrams
52. Do the CN Tower Edgewalk
53. Come up with a cool list of things to do in Toronto
54. Get new prescription sunglasses
55. Write my first eBook
56. Establish a regular social group with the young men at church—Beers with the Blokes
57. Draw “Rogue” for Sobia, 2Pac for Nabil, and a picture of Jubilee for Jaemeel
58. Take a vacation with the family
59. Return Karen and Colin’s stack of Blu-rays
60. Return Emily’s PS2 games
61. Buy a lawn mower
62. Throw a one-year cake smash for DoomzToo
63. Buy some killer jeans
64. Give away all my business cards
65. Read some books so I can clear up some shelf space
66. Use more art supplies
67. Blaze through my Netflix “to-watch” list
68. Put a family emergency kit together in order to survive either a Zombie Apocalypse and/or Mother Nature world-ending scenario
69. Get a second green bin for all that baby waste
70. Come up with the best story ever for the “About Me” section I usually leave blank on all those websites
71. Keep way fewer browser tabs open
72. Come up with the perfect stink face to give people every time they ask whether Sarah and I have thought about Kid #2 yet. Because I can’t hit them.
73. Play the Race Card a little less often
74. See a doctor about the mysterious pain in my side
75. Get Sarah to watch the Star Wars trilogy
76. Finally watch The Godfather trilogy
77. Watch Star Trek. All of it. The original series, The Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Enterprise, the movies—soak it all in!
78. Connect with more family bloggers and establish daddy blogging as a reputable niche
79. Take a hot-air balloon ride
80. Sell my Wacom Intuos 3 6″ x 8″
81. Add blinds to the window in the kitchen
82. Trim my devices down to a reasonable number of apps
83. Go to a Toronto Maple Leafs game and see what all the hype is about
84. Give a crap about the World Cup (because I’ll probably give no craps about the Olympics)
85. Introduce DoomzToo to my colleagues
86. Take DoomzToo to an event and survive
87. Clean my social media accounts up
88. Finish Brandgasm 101
89. Finish the Audience Business Masterclass
90. Make something out of TeamTrolling.com
91. Eat St. Huberts at least once, unless I make it to Montreal and my cousins can take us out for even better chicken
92. Help build a greater web presence for my church, Walmer Road Baptist Church
93. Eat at Canoe
94. Crochet a stocking for DoomzToo to match mine
95. Acquire a bitcoin
96. Do the Steamwhistle brewery tour
97. Visit the Ripley’s Aquarium
98. Teach DoomzToo baby sign language
99. Try some experimentation with food, like molecular gastronomy
100. Read to DoomzToo regularly

Why You Share Your Goals

There are things that happen when you share your goals. You discover that friends want to help you succeed. You learn of new opportunities you might not have known about otherwise—if I didn’t share my goals last year, I wouldn’t be in the place I’m in now, preparing to tackle even bigger goals on the strength of my relationships.

So with that in mind, I’ve shown you mine, now show me yours! What are some of the goals you have for 2014? What do you think I missed? Let’s keep each other accountable! It’s the best way to make sure you close the year out better than you started it!

Hope to hear from all my fam and friends,