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As I have mentioned many times, including just the other day, I need to write some goals. Some personal goals for me to focus on and for you to police me on. I’ve determined that goal setting works for me when I’m passionate about it and when I have something to prove…usually to those who don’t think I can. It didn’t take me long to write out my goals. In fact I wrote them down on January 15 in about 10 minutes but I’ve been sick, so haven’t had a chance to post them. But today I’m feeling better. At least good enough to sit down in front of a computer and type out some words, so here goes.

My 2010 personal goals are:

• Raise $20,000 for the Tom Baker Cancer Centre & Alberta Cancer Foundation through the 2nd Annual Tight ‘n Bright event to be held March 20, 2010.
• Generate $80,000 through legal online activities like affiliate sales, products & services by September 15, 2010. Roughly 236 days remain, so that would equate to $338.98 per day…if I start making cash NOW!
• Run a full marathon under 4 hours by December 15, 2010.
• Launch BlueBinder by March 1, 2010 with full e-comm capabilities.
• Launch Phase 1 of OoberScoop by February 1, 2010.
• Launch Workshops Everywhere by February 1, 2010 to the Calgary market as detailed in Phase 1 of the plan.
• Travel to three new destinations by December 31, 2010.
• Speak at a minimum of one conference by November 30, 2010.
• Support and love Monica, Ava and the other members of my family on a daily basis.
• Help Monica launch her site to the best of my abilities around her timeline.
• Blog a minimum of five times per week through to June 30, 2010.
• Live everyday and enjoy and appreciate what I have.

So as you can see I’ve no doubt got to get some things going. Couple the above goals with daily life and there’s not a lot of time left to actually do things…but the goal in the end is to free myself from the day-to-day to allow me to have the time to do those things. All of this will be completed in full by December 31, 2010. I look forward to sharing my success, and no doubt failures, with you along the way.

Is there anything I’ve missed? Do you think I’m completely crazy? Wanna know more about something I’ve put in the list? It’s easy, just leave me a comment below.

Thanks to Lyndon for the inspiration and the graphic.

Yes it’s true, I’ve been thinking. Often this is something scary as the end result and it just may be in this case. As you may or may not know I’m off on a bit of an Eastern European tour. I’m sitting in the small town of Hostinée, Czech Republic right now. It’s beautiful here and so I plan to take a lot of photos. Of course, there was the connecting flight in London’s Heathrow airport that I got to spend a little too much time in as I missed my connect flight by mere minutes. Well, I missed the chance to check-in for the flight by about three minutes. I was not happy at first but took the opportunity to spend some time taking some photos and thinking. I haven’t had a chance to upload the photos or come up with a complete post around it but I’ll definitely give you a bit of a preview. It’s basically Canada vs. UK (or even Europe for that matter) and things that I know I’ll miss about this part of the world or that they’ve done right.

Honestly something as simple as actually separating the toilet and the shower/washroom makes perfect sense. I’ve yet to be in a home out here (and I’ve already been to a few) where the sink & toilet live in exclusivity alongside a bathtub or shower. To me it makes sense because it works. Just like low-flow toilets. Back home in Canada we’ve got this Americanized sense of entitlement that there will always be fresh water and a bit of a “who cares” mentality. One other thing I love…people are polite. Not only are they polite but they dress nicely too. Hard to find ‘scrubs‘ over here, unlike home…even in the office some times!

Of course I do my best thinking on my runs and finally had a chance to get out for a quick 3 miles today (or I should say 4.8 km). Everything here is metric…and I mean everything. I can’t tell them I’m 6′ 2″ (188 cm) or they look at me like I’m on drugs. Though the elevation is lower here then back home in Calgary, it’s a little more challenging as I have to watch for cars (pedestrians are truly seen as obstacles) and there’s quite a mountain climb initially. I’ll be updating my runs page off and on. The plan is to not spend a lot of time in front of the computer while here.

Oh and definitely one last thing I’ll miss that I’ll write about later would be the awesome selection of dirt cheap local brews! This country definitely knows beer!

Some might say I tend to fly a lot — my daughter does too. Working for Canada’s number two airline definitely helps me do that. Tonight I’m off for a couple of weeks to Prague, Czech Republic and the surrounding area. I’ve got my passport, some money in the bank, standby tickets on British Airways and am counting down the hours until I hopefully (cross your fingers) make it on their Boeing 767-300ER to London Heathrow.

This past Monday I was flying back from Winnipeg to Calgary on one of WestJet’s aircraft equipped with live satellite TV. The unfortunate part was they were INOP so nobody could watch anything. What was I to do? Oh no…what would I have done 4 years ago before live TV on the aircraft? Well I reached for my iPhone that had some podcasts on it that I’d not yet listened to. There were some from the Get-It-Done Guy that I’d downloaded a while back based around a certain level of interest. One of them was about packing wrinkle free clothes and it mentioned OneBag.com as a resource. Last night as I was packing probably too much clothing, I wondered if there was a better way. I rarely simply fold my clothes and stuff them in a suitcase (error number one according to OneBag). I often thought I was smart by simply rolling them. There’s no doubt that compared to folding, rolling saves A LOT of space. I decided to try the bundle wrapping method detailed on the OneBag website. Luckily they even have a nicely illustrated guide displaying how it’s done.

I was hesitant at first as I was laying out my clothes in this funny stack on the bed. But as I managed to add more and more to the pile it started to hit me that yes, this might actually save more room. So I continued laying items out. Then came the fun part, the actual bundling. I followed the guide and created this nice little bundle that, quite honestly, fit perfectly inside my Samsonite carry-on bag. HOLY SMOKES…there was room to spare even!

Now the fun part is I’ve got to undo the bundle tonight when I get home to add my jeans to the mix and another pair or two of underwear. I’m definitely using the bundle wrapping method as well when I do it again. Since I’ve not got to worry about my clothing being all wrinkly (though it will be because it started out that way), I can focus more time and effort on enjoyable things like shooting some photos. I’m definitely looking forward to this trip.

I woke up this morning realizing that I’ve got just over 4 weeks left until the half marathon I’m planning to run. Yikes! A while back I posted about training for it and well, due to various blisters, injuries and a lack of motivation I just haven’t really trained for it. Alas now I have to. I’m determined to beat my personal worst of 2:30 and change. That was five years ago with minimal training.

Today I decided to head out for a quick run over lunch and was happy I did. The path around the airport is nice and open with sun beating down, slight hills and elevation changes, and a fox to watch out for. Unfortunately returning to the office wasn’t so much fun as my left heal has once again begun to sport a blister. Crappy. So now this weekend is about heading out to buy new shoes. I suppose that it makes sense when I think about the miles these shoes have logged. I think they’re the same ones that ran the half marathon those five years ago. Not to mention they’ve hit a 5k in Amsterdam and even a quick run in Maui. Of course I’m hoping to run a full marathon in Hawaii later this year so new shoes will definitely be needed. It’ll be my first and based on vacation time and budgets I’m just not sure it will happen, but it’s still a goal. So this weekend I won’t be raising a glass of beer (I split 104+ last weekend with my brother) to toast it, but please feel to raise yours in honor of me! Happy running.

A few weeks ago I went on a vacation to Maui. And like every time I visit Maui it was truly beautiful and wonderful. So much so that I found my house but now need to figure out how to purchase it. In my absence from “the day job” I needed to setup an Out of Office alert as a courtesy to those who emailed me looking for me to do some work (like that would happen on vacation). Well it actually did with an early morning text message, but that’s a different story.

I was tired and bored of the “normal” Out of Office notifications and wanted to customize mine a bit. So here’s what I sent out.

Hey, you emailed me?

I’m currently Out of Office until Wednesday, April 22 soaking up the sun, sand, surf and golf on the island of Maui in the Pacific. Essentially I will have no access to email and phone. So for all matter related to WestJet Vacations, please don’t hesitate to contact Sean McXXXXXXXXX at smcXXXXX@XXXXXXXX.com or 403-5XX-XXXX…he’s looking forward to helping you out with your problem. Of course, he’s not a trained psychologist so you may not want to entirely take his advice or attempted prescribed cures.

If you don’t take his suggestions, then you might as well take a vacation to cure your woes. Check out the newly designed WestJet Vacations website at http://content.westjetvacations.com/main.php and let us know what you think. I spent way too much time working on it in lots of meetings, focus groups and of course my mind. That’s really why I need to go on vacation. My mind has already left, so now I’m trying to go find it. Did I mention I’m going to Maui? Enjoy your time without me and I’ll reply to any outstanding (but not mediocre) emails upon my return.

Aloha!

Marshall

So that simple message got me thinking. Surely there are some GREAT Out of Office alerts floating around this thing we call the internet. I’m curious to know the content (and a little context) of some great messages you’ve received. Please leave them here.