Community Bucket List

The Digital Nomad Academy (DNA) and Cody McKibben, the founder of the DNA

My 1 year roadmap is my 1st assignment for the year as a student of the Digital Nomad Academy, an online school/mentorship program that helps teach a community of people like me who are working towards living a passionate life to create a location independent lifestyle/business. Location independent means that our job would allow us to work from anywhere, as long as there is internet connection. If we can work from anywhere, that means that we can live anywhere. A location independent business helps aid a location independent lifestyle which could involve a lot of traveling and/or a lot of freedom to choose when you work, where you work and how you work. Cody McKibben is a lifestyle designer and digital nomad who created the Digital Nomad Academy, and he and other successful entrepreneurs, business people, internet marketers and creative types are our faculty and mentors throughout this year-long mentorship and schooling. We also have the support from all of the students in this community who are driven and passionate in achieving their goals. You can find more about Cody McKibben at Thrilling Heroics.

#1 — What are my goals for 2012? Where will I be in 1 year?

Writing Goals:

In one year from now, I will have my writing published in Curve Magazine*, EDGE*, LOTL*, The Advocate (both online & print), Autostraddle,  AfterEllen, New Next Now, Thrilling Heroics, The Friendship Effect, Life Out of a Suitcase and I’ll continue to blog at Self-Love Warrior, Community Bucket List and the Love Warrior Community. I will also have my first short story published, Shit. Fuck, Alice and I’ll have my first book/ebook self-published. *I have already been published in these publications, EDGE, LOTL and both online & print in Curve Magazine.

Love Warrior Community Goals:

In one year from now, the Love Warrior Community will have had it’s first big campaign, first product launch and at least 2 more interns. There will be at least 10 people at a time contributing to the group self-love blog and the Love Warrior Community will be an active community, benefiting a lot of people. It will also be bringing in money through our product launch, ads and the Self-Love store, enough money for a nice small side income for my mom, and a nice monthly stipend for me from our product launch that I’ll help develop heavily.

Money/Lifestyle:

In one year from now, I’ll be able to afford my own place and I will be living in my own place in the US, backpacking/traveling or living abroad. I will also be able to afford monthly payments to pay off my student loans within a 10 to 30 year plan. And I will be able to live a lifestyle of luxury and excitement. I’ll be able to go out dancing, drinking, to shows, concerts, and other fun events. I’ll be able to treat friends and family to dinner. I’ll be able to take dance lessons, piano lessons, language lessons and travel the world, to known and unknown destinations. I’ll be able to go to the movies, buy coffee and small pleasantries and not have to worry if I’ll have enough money to afford my next bill. I’ll be able to afford my other monthly bills, like the iPhone I’ll have within a year. I’ll be able to afford making donations and supporting artists who are doing good by spreading their passions to the world. I will have time off and plenty of it. I will be able to work when I want to and take vacation when I want to. I’ll be able to create my own schedule and all the work that I do I will be passionate about. My job will be less stressful, since stress is inherent and can be both good and bad (I’ll have less of the negative stress). I’ll make some money from freelance social media consulting, writing, editing and passion coaching, but only projects that I really want to take on. Most of my income will come from residual income from product launches and other forms of passive income. For the freelance work that I do, I want to adopt a “Pay me what you think is fair and pay me what you can afford” policy. I’ll make money from the Love Warrior Product Launch.

Social Goals

I will put more time into keeping in touch with my friends, via phone, email, skype, snail mail and visiting in-person. I’ll spend more quality time with my family. I’ll make new friends and push through my comfort zone in going out more by myself.

Community Bucket List Goals

I’ll have people consistently submitting bucket lists, editing bucket lists, engaging in conversation with other bucket lists, posting their successes and process on the FB group and actively engaging in the Community Bucket List Mastermind Group. I’ll interview more people to be featured as the Featured Awesome Person and I’ll have other people interviewing, writing and contributing to the Featured Awesome Person column. I’ll have more guest posts and video posts from other people who will share advice, their journey and expertise to help others in achieving their goals and passions. I will have people working together with similar goals, helping and supporting each other and I will have people exchanging and sharing services to help each other out with their passions and goals. I will help people live passionate lives, live happier lives, live in the moment and make new friends across the country and globe. I will also come up with at least one way to monetize Community Bucket List that will both benefit the Community Bucket List members and earn money for me so I can continue to put my time into my passions.

Things I Need to Make Happen in 2012

1. Afford flight/lodging/food/etc. to my niece’s first birthday in Hawaii in May 2012. *This one is the number one have to.
2. Make it to the East Coast for March.
3. Go to SF Pride again and dance, go to all the fun events and do it all by myself or find some people who will want to do everything that I want to do to join me.

Are all of my goals possible within a year? A lot of them are, but all of them? I’m not sure yet about the financial aspect, so as I finish this process, creating milestones, etc, we’ll see.

#2 — My Lifestyle in a year

In one year from now, the end of 2012, the cusp of 2013 — I will not be living at home with my parents. Although I enjoy it and I love my parents and family and I am surrounded by love and support and don’t have to pay rent, my own space would be amazing. And I’m constantly helping my family, which isn’t a bad thing, and I enjoy it, but that would be a lot of time to work on my own stuff if I wasn’t always helping, helping, helping others. And my social life would increase, I would need human interaction and I wouldn’t have the daily interaction with my family if I didn’t live at home, so that would force me to go out more. Plus, when I do move out, I want to live in a big city environment, which would definitely make going out more feasible. When I have more independence, I act more independent. Living at home, without a car, I rarely go out and I work, work, work, work. Living in Spain, I wasn’t afraid to go out by myself. I traveled the city I lived in by myself and I traveled the country by myself. When I bought a one-way ticket to the East Coast, travel and exploration was made easy because that was the environment and situation I put myself in. I traveled from city to city, state to state, living with friends, half-strangers and I was going out by myself often, taking risks and doing things I normally wouldn’t do if I was sheltered by the safety of my comfort zone. Living within my comfort zone is boring. The place I decide to move to, I want to remove the comfort zone.

Where will I live?

I don’t know. I have a handful of places in mind. Here are my top 4 of most likely:

• New York City, NY
• Downtown Petaluma, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Buenos Aires, Argentina

Other places:I love Massachusetts. I’ve only been to Boston once and I didn’t get as good as a vibe as I got from NYC and DC, but I didn’t have much time to explore it. I also love the Amherst, MA area, the Smith College area, but it doesn’t have the big city vibe that I want. I want to travel to Salem, MA again, in season, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Overall, I love MA as a state, but I don’t know of a specific city that I would want to live in, maybe Boston. I’m basically down for any big city, ones with great public transportation would be high on my list. I also wouldn’t mind living in a small town, but I wouldn’t want to live there long. I like the idea of city/town hopping — living in one place at a time for a handful of months, 2 to 6 months. I love the Virginia area, and I could just live in DC to access that by train, bus and Metro. I’ve also thought about LA, but I have no clue where in that area, and I think I would prefer the other cities I mentioned before exploring LA. I would also love to live outside of the country. I want to live in Buenos Aires, Argentina and I LOVED living in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. I loved Spain.

My Recreation

If I live somewhere on the East Coast, I will be visiting with my East Coast family a lot. If I live in NYC, I’ll be exploring the city a lot on my own, making new friends, going out dancing, going to comedy shows, to open mic nights, to poetry readings, to shows, exploring the creative/arts scenes, going for walks through Central Park. I’ll be an explorer. If I live in Argentina, it will be similar, yet very different. I’ll know no one, so I’ll be an explorer and explore the dancing/arts/creative scene, making new friends and exploring on my own a lot. Living in NYC, the East Coast or Argentina, my life will be a lot different as opposed to living in SF or downtown Petaluma. I know a lot of people in SF and downtown Petaluma. If I stay in Petaluma, I’ll be more social living downtown, but I’ll also make family a high priority since I’ll be near all of my family. In SF, I’ll also be near a lot of my family. If I live in SF, I’ll be exploring a lot of the city and a lot of the lesbian/queer scene. No matter where I live, I want to be dancing more, dancing at clubs and dancing for fun and maybe taking some dancing lessons. And I want to explore a lot, on my own and with others. Whatever I do, I want to be living a lot outside of my comfort zone because that is when things get lively, exciting and in the moment.

#3 — Health

I want to take my health seriously. X amount of years from now I don’t want to be an old lady that cannot walk, function or take care of myself. I don’t want to get diabetes, have a heart attack or get any other health related disease that my family is prone to. I want to eat healthier, eat less meat, drink more water, consume less caffeine, wear more sunscreen, stretch more/do more Yoga, exercise consistently and sleep consistently.

#4 — Turning 4 goals from above into clearly defined long-term goals, listing simple, clear steps and milestones for each goal

A. First Goal: Health

I’m going to start simple and not tackle everything on my list.

1. Drink at least 5 glasses of water each day. If I reach 8 glasses, more power to me. I’ll drink from the small cups or from a water bottle, which for some reason makes drinking water more appealing to me. I’ll also start of my day with 1 glass of water.
2. Get at least 30 minute of aerobic exercise 6 days a week. I can bike with my mom, go for walks with my parents, jog with my sisters or do exercise TV in my family room. I love the 2 mile walk with Leslie from Exercise TV. I can also practice Yoga in my home and do my own home workouts. Or I could go for runs by myself or contact Michelle from the Body Conditioning class I took last semester and I can sign up for local 5 Ks with her and her family.
3. Stretch after aerobic exercise for at least 10 minutes or do at least 10 minutes of Yoga 6 days a week.
4. Floss at least once a day in the morning, after I wake up.
5. Have one meal a day that doesn’t include meat, cheese and eggs. I can make a list of foods that I like to get at the grocery store, like fruits, vegetables, granola, non-meat, cheese, egg foods and buy them so I can be prepared with those type of meals. I can also get into cooking, and prepare some delicious vegetarian meals.
6. Have egg meals 3 days out of the week or less.

B. Second Goal: Create Product Launch for Love Warrior Community & Pitch Self-Love Campaign

The self-love campaign can help take the Love Warrior Community to a national level, help increase interaction and it can help the community grow, this will all help to enable more people to love themselves and to spread love to the world. The product launch will also help create active Love Warriors who will be able to create local projects that spread self-love to others in their community. This product will also be my first form of residual income. Since I’ll be helping in a big way in the creation process of this product, I’ll make a percentage of the sales. This is very important in my goal of overall freedom, financial freedom, which leads to living on my own, being able to pay off my student loans and being able to live the lifestyle I want. What I have to do before I can pitch the campaign or start working on the product launch:

1. Re-launch the Love Warrior Community 1/2/12
2. Update About page on Self-Love Warrior Group Blog & add submission page.
3. After the Re-launch, add these pages to the site:
• Resources page
• Advertise page
• SoulCollage® Info/Submission page
• Group Blog page
• Street team page
• Add Body Love Letter
• Add Zazzle Store
• Contest page

With the Love Warrior Community (LWC) site re-launched and the Self Love Warrior group blog updated, I will be ready to get started on the campaign. Timeline: The LWC site will be re-launched on 1/2/12Once this is done, the next step is to help create the product with my mom for the product launch, a one-year guided self-love practice via email, forms and a FB group. We will need to:

• Brainstorm/write out an outline of what we will want each individual to reach/achieve during their guided self-love practice and after they complete it. What will we include in this guided self-love practice? What will the format be? *Finish brainstorm by: 1/14/12.
• We will need to create any forms, survey self-assessments and supplement documents.
• We will need to create milestones.
• We will need to create the guided content for 365 emails, representing each day of the year.
• Will there be video supplements?
• How will they share their successes with the community?
• Where will additional support come from?
• In-person meet-up groups?
• Taking the self-love practice to the streets?
• Acting as a Love Warrior
• Post one-year guided self-love practice?
• Interviews, extra guidance/inspiration?
• Price
• A list of places where we can promote the product.

Once this product is created or near to finish, we can launch the Self-Love campaign and hopefully we’ll be collaborating with an active, internationally known online media site/community.

• Create an outline, goals and milestones for the self-love campaign.

C. Third goal: Making Community Bucket List more active and monetizing it.

I love supporting others in reaching their passions and living happier, passionate lives. Community Bucket List helps me do this. Like I stated at the beginning of my 1 year roadmap, I want more people submitting bucket lists, interacting and leaving comments/starting conversations on others’ bucket lists, participating in the FB group and CBL mastermind group and guest posting and submitting Featured Awesome Person posts. I want people to use my site to achieve their passions and to gain the support and encouragement from others while in the process of achieving their goals. Basically, I want CBL to be an active thriving community. I also want to find a way to monetize the site, like a product launch, so I can make a residual income from Community Bucket List.

• Update/create the CBL emails for those who sign up for the email list. *Set up by: 1/29/11
• Create 1st follow up email for newsletter: 12/31/11
• Create 2nd follow up email for newsletter: 1/5/12
• Create 3rd follow up email for newsletter: 1/12/12
• Create an action plan to get more people submitting bucket lists.
• Create an action plan to get more people commenting on others’ bucket lists.
• Create an action plan to get more people sharing their successes and process in the CBL Facebook group.
• Continue to update and make the mastermind group an active community for those who have submitted bucket lists and who have decided to take their goals to the next level. *Give feedback on everybody’s posts within 2 days of their updates and make weekly posts.
• Post my 1 year roadmap in my Community Bucket List Mastermind Group. *Finish by:  12/28/11.
• Go through the mastermind group forum and look through the recent updates that I missed and give my support/suggestions/feedback. Finish by: 12/29/11. (Finished a day early.)
• Start writing more posts that are on theme to CBL. *Starting the 1st week of the new year, write at least 1 post a week.
• Interview more people and post Featured Awesome Person posts bi-monthly. (Interview Sondra to feature as a Featured Awesome Person.)
• Have people guest post.
• Come up with ways to monetize CBL: a list of product ideas or other ways to monetize that site that benefits the CBL members.

D. Goal four: Finish my short story, then turn my Alice story into a short novel or a series of short stories and self-publish it.

• Look at Writer’s Hollow FB group and interact with updates that I missed. *Finish by: 12/28/11
• Finish critiquing Megan’s piece from awhile ago and send it to her. Finish by: 1/4/11
• *Starting in the new year, get involved back in Writer’s Hollow and I’ll be able to send Part 2 and 3 when we submit original work to get critiqued.
• Send it out to a few other select people for feedback. I’ll ask if some of my writer friends who I took creative writing classes in college will critique it. I’ll ask two of my creative writing professors from college to critique it. I developed the character Alice and part of her story with one professor and I developed this short story about Alice with another professor.
• Start writing more scenes/short stories that add onto the Alice story
• Send my longer piece(s) to get feedback.
• Edit it.
• Research different avenues of self-publishing.
• Do what I need to do to get it made as a paperback and ebook and get it done, cover art, print-on-demand, etc.
• Create a website for the book/series of short stories.
• Set up how I’ll sell it: on my site, Amazon, smashwords, indie bookstores, in-person
• Create a marketing campaign/publicity campaign.
• Set up a book tour.
• Spread it!

Conclusion

My main goals for 2012 are to turn my passions into money. A lot of the work that I do and a lot of my passions bring me zero to little money. I do freelance work now and again, but it doesn’t give me enough money to support myself. My goal for 2012 is financial freedom to be able to support myself. Money has been my number one stress in 2011. I feel like I cannot fully be happy following my passions if I am not financially stable and supporting myself. Lack of money is what has been holding me back.

Today’s Goals 1/10/12:

1. This Thursday, meeting w/Ja’el.
2. Write book for Ja’el.
3. Jan 14, SF
4. Michaela, FB Valentines packages
5. Respond to CBL Guest Post
6. Buy 2 issues of Curve to mail off.
7. New blog? Brain storm
8. Make Creative Writing Ideas from paid .org to free .com.
9. Email Internship office at R.
10. Jan. 12, Thursday, SF
11. Passion Pit DJ, 10:15 Folsom, 1/20/ $15 – Eventbrite
12. Saturday, SF, football?
13. Saturday, Feb. 12th, Her HRC San Francisco $10
14. Feb. 16th, Thursday, LA, email.
15. Re-schedule Skype with Caitlin.
16. Call Jenny, Michaela & Audra.
17. Check Corey’s LinkedIn page.
18. Mail Back Issues of Curve.
19. Respond to Asia domain email.
20. Send invoice to Dr. Griffith.
21. Movement
22. Curve 10 am – ?
23. Write my own 10 minute self-love post.
24. Writer’s Hollow: Friday 13th, am, critic ginger bread responses and Megan’s older writing post.
25. Comment on self-love posts: 1) New Year, New Beginnings, 2) January 4th, 3) The Gift of Receiving and Truly Being Received, My Self-Love, 4) The World’s Benefit, 5) The Glee in a Teeny Banana.
26. Write next email in the CBL newsletter/email mentorship.
27. FB message/post responding.
28. Send Mo Card
29. Send Bobs card.