Well, after 47 days into 2009, I thought I should finally list my goals publicly before this year’s over!
Even though I’m a little late posting this entry, I haven’t been slacking on the work to be done. Three major goals have already been crossed off the list: Start redesigning ptahdunbar.com, starting up a my first company and working on said company, full time.

My original plan for the redesign was to take down the site Jan the 1st, work on it for 16 days straight, then launch it on my birthday. Of course that didn’t go as planned, so instead, I just decided to release what I’ve got thus far and tweak from there. Currently it’s just the latest trunk version of WP Framework, but the theme will start shaping itself gradually into the “Atlanta City Theme” I envisioned it to be, which is a realignment of the previous theme, Atlanta2Jamaica. With the redesign, I wanted to take this blog into a completely new direction that allows a lot more flexibility for the different types of content I’ll be publishing. We’ll see how that goes.

That brings us to my second goal that I’ve already crossed off. Finally starting up my very own company, Design by Craftsmen. That too, was suppose to be finished during my birthday week but apparently it takes “several weeks to process,” (instead of the just a few days) to get my business license. Oh well, it’s done and Design by Craftsmen is born, a small web creative studio based in Atlanta, Ga. Of course that means that I’ll have to start calling part of my house a “studio” from now on until I actually get one

Third goal was to start working on DBC full time. Thus far, I’m a week into it and by Thursday the bulk of the  “administrative” stuff should be finished. The transitioning process of turning my hobby into a business has already shown it’s hiccups, but I expected them and came prepared. I’ve given myself a month to knock out everything on my DBC to do list before I open doors so time is ticking. I’ll do a full blown post on DBC asap once my time opens up.

Now onto the goals I have yet to accomplish.

Last year, I wrote that “If you don’t know javascript, now’s the time to learn it!” While I did learn a thing or two about javascript and chose jQuery as my JS framework of choice, nothing really sunk in. So this time around I’ll be actually building a project using these technologies (and when I say build, I mean write as much as possible, then revert back to Ctrl+C-ing/Ctrl+V-ing!) so it’ll be a great learning experience. In addition, I’ll be getting more acquainted with Ruby and Rails too so I can start building out my “big ideas.” It all falls neatly into the grand master plan.

Once I get back from WordCamp Miami, I’ll be looking for some designers to partner with (preferably locally) as I want to start focusing my skillset in development. I like being a jack of all trades, but trying to juggle being the project manager, the web designer and the web developer is insane and won’t scale for DBC. That isn’t to say that I’ll be stopping designing completely. Recently I’ve been doing a lot of user interface design work. I think UI Design will be more valuable to me in my situation so it should be fun.

Finally, this year I’m going to become more involved within the web industry as a whole. This means attending more conferences/local meet ups, become more active online, essentially building up my personal brand. Whatever the method, I’m really just trying to get my name out there, meet as many new people as possible, network, learn, and have a lot of fun in the process. So we’ll see how that goes.

Now on a more personal note, I’ve set a few goals for myself that aren’t exactly career related. Staying in college is one of them. I wasn’t able to take any courses this spring semester due to to limited time and working two part-time jobs, but we’ll see what the summer entails. Finishing college is very high on my priority list so hopefully I won’t run into anymore roadblocks. I also want to keep practicing my French and German. I learned those languages (plus a few others, but they suck) a few years ago when I lived in Europe (for several years) so I’m trying not to loose them. Rosetta helps, but talking to foreigners around campus is a lot more effective (and hilarious), so I’ll be doing more of that once I go back. In addition to that, later on this year I want to start learning Spanish again. It kind of sucks being half puerto rican and not being able to speak their native language. This year, I’ll learn the basics and go from there.

As far as traveling in ‘09, I’ve already got Florida (Tampa, Miami) down on my list. Actually, I haven’t really set any traveling goals as most of the time, it’s a spur of the moment kind of thing.

Finally, one of my last goals written down was to just have fun and make 2009 the best it can be. Play harder, get away from the computer more often, and just learn more about all the things I’m into. Kind of broad, but it’s one of my long-term goals and will probably take more than a year.

So far, this year is looking to becoming one of my best, we’ll see what’s in store in the coming months!