What Comes Next? Planning for 2016

- Colin Ashby

victorian3_SF

Don’t worry. This isn’t going to be one of those “new year, new me” type posts (yes…people still do them). This is more about the shifts I’ve noticed in my priorities and goals over the course of this past year. There’s been a lot.

This was the year that…

  • I started off being unemployed after graduating from college
  • I got a full-time job (#hallelujah)
  • I appeared on a national talk show
  • 3 vacations were taken (Mexico, Los Angeles/San Francisco, and The Bahamas/Florida)
  • I turned 21 (not really something I had to work to do, but still fun to mention!)
  • I connected with great people in the writing, entrepreneurship, and blogging industries

With all the things that happened this year, I still think about how much things have changed as I go into 2016. This year something weird happened. I got really into writing and personal finance. Personal finance, you know, the thing most people think is boring. Yeah, that.

It started when I was researching tips on moving to New York City. I stumbled across the article “How I moved to NYC with only $300” located on L. Bee and the Money Tree, a personal finance blog. After that, I was hooked. I found other personal finance sites and started reading them. Everything about them was so inspiring. Many of the bloggers had lots of debt and were able to pay it off quickly, lots of them talked about how their blogs helped them in other parts of their life. Self-employment became a reality for many of them. Some of the posts I loved the most are below:

Like many great things, I go back and reread these articles time after time. These people came from having low-paying jobs, being unemployed, having huge amounts of debt, and a host of other dire circumstances to having blogs that boosted them towards their goals.

I love the personal finance community. I love the writing community. Both of these have been areas of great growth this year.

So….what does this all mean?

I want to focus more on these areas going into the new year. I’m not exactly sure what I mean by that. I know I want this blog to have a more precise focus on a group of topics rather than being scatterbrained. I know I want to make more in the new year (more books, more opportunities, more money).

There’s a lot of planning going about what I want for this website. The color picking, blog post brainstorming, and design scheme type planning. Look out for it in January!

Have you noticed anything that changed about yourself this past year? What plans do you have for the year ahead?