Dear Friends,
Here’s wishing you well on the morning of December 24th.
For those who celebrate (I do), I hope you’re all having a wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas. Everyone else, I hope the holiday month is also treating you well.
Things are great over here. I’m in Portland with my family, taking a few days off before getting a head start on what looks to be an intense 2010.
Three blocks from home in my Southeast neighborhood, the great Waffle Window is open until 6pm tonight. Check out the new “Hot Apple Pie” waffle (highly recommended) below.
When I wasn’t eating waffles yesterday, I successfully restructured a few travel plans for early 2010, and will be in the South Pacific right after New Year’s.
It’s often hard to find availability on Air New Zealand flights from the states, but I located an option that works perfectly. Yay. It’s summer in the southern hemisphere, and I need to get started on fun countries like Samoa and Vanuatu.
The Shape of Things to Come
Thanks for all the great feedback on the Annual Review series. At least 40 other blogs have published various parts of their own reviews, and I’m glad to see the idea taking off. (You can see some of them in the trackbacks for each post in the series, published alongside the comments.)
A few people also asked about my own goals for next year. I’m including a few of the highlights here as an exercise in mass accountability.
In 2010 I want to…
- Coordinate an Unconventional Book Tour to every state and province (I’ll be asking for help on this; stay tuned)
- Launch our AONC Charity Project
- Double overall readership and all social media metrics
- Double revenue for UnconventionalGuides.com (without reducing anything we do here at AONC)
- Create two new online communities to serve 500+ participants
- Visit 20 new countries, including some hard-to-get-to places in Africa, Central Asia, and the South Pacific
But first, I’m relaxing with the family visit and the holiday week. This afternoon we’re going to see Up in the Air (of course) and then… we’ll probably eat more waffles.
I’m grateful for you all and will be looking forward to starting a new year. For now, Merry Christmas!
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Department of High Fives by Intrepidation
Btw, if you’re going to Vanuatu you really should hop over to New Caledonia (if you’ve never been). It’s the most beautiful place in this world in my humble opinion.
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