2009 Goals and Predictions

I just took a look back at the blog post I made for my 2008 goals and realized that I actually accomplished a few things this past year. The biggest one was publishing In a Sense of Love. It was a great personal achievement, but in the sea of new books that get self-published each year, it largely went unnoticed.

The second goal that I accomplished was launching the Midwest Machine Shop Network. So far it has not attracted the interest that I thought it would. It looks like I will have to populate the machine shop list myself, before anyone will find value in visiting the site. The next goal then for the MMSN will be to create the database and populate it with all known Midwest machine shops.

Interest in my girlfriend's student loan story has been steady. Each month the site receives hundreds of visitors from dozens of countries. We were able to resolve the loan this past year, but I will leave the pages up for all those who are looking for answers to their own problem student loans. Student loans have hurt our economy just as much as the home loan crisis, but you're never going to hear about that, or a student loan bailout, any time soon.

My goals for 2009 are similar to last year's. I am busy editing my girlfriend's next book, "Curse of the Lost Tribe" and we are also developing a plot for the sequel to "In a Sense of Love". I also have plans to complete my book about the early days of online gaming, a project I've been playing around with for some time now. I'm going to put even more effort into writing and editing in the coming year, and less on the web design business. I believe there is greater revenue potential in developing ad supported web sites. You just have to have content that people are looking for.

My predictions going into 2009 are somewhat pessimistic. If the economy doesn't get better by the end of March, there could be another round of depressing employment news. I think we will continue to hear more about alternative energy technologies. Any technology that has the potential to save us time, money, or natural resources will be big in 2009. One last thing that could make a huge difference for many Americans: allow working adults and small business owners to enroll in an affordable, State managed, health care plan. Good luck with all that!