I love this time of year. Japan shuts down at the end of the year and I have some time to myself so I can close out on all of the unfinished things in my life. I finish any paperwork I need to get done around the house, I empty my email boxes, I go through my clothes and clean out things I am not wearing anymore and I clean up my home office. I feel very settled with everything in order. I even look at my electronics and sell off electronics that I am not using. Japan has the most amazing 2nd hand market for this type of stuff. I was able to sell and old iPad for $250USD today! Pretty amazing. I also review my yearly goals. I set some goals for ShootTokyo in 2014 back on January 1st. Let's review how I did.:

Goal #1 Be more active on ShootTokyo

I wanted to make sure I was more active on ShootTokyo in 2014. I set the following goals as a way to measure how I was going throughout the year:

1. Double visits to ShootTokyo in 2014

2. Grow Facebook likes to 10,000 in 2014

3. Sell 12 prints in 2014

4. Sell 150 T-Shirts in 2014

I got very busy with my new job and amazing amount of travel and didn't post as much as I would have liked on ShootTokyo. Overall I am pretty happy with how ShootTokyo performed. I didn't double traffic in 2014 but I did grew traffic 70% year on year which is pretty amazing for a website of this size.

I also set a goal to grow my Facebook likes to 10,000. I quickly abandoned his goal as I found Facebook to not be a good investment in my energy. People who have Facebook pages will know what I am talking about. Facebook is heavily throttling when pages show up in streams so while I have more than 4,000 likes on my Facebook page often it will only reach a few hundred people.

I far exceeding #3 and #4.

Goal #2 Publish a ShootTokyo book

This has been a dream of mine for a few years and finally I was in a position with my photography to publish a book. I ran a Kickstarter Project in the spring to help fund the publishing of my book and much to my surprise achieve 800% of my goal. This allowed me to make a much high quality book than I initially intended. Through the Kickstarter and follow on sales on ShootTokyo the book is already 80% sold. This is a huge accomplishment for me and something I am very proud of. If you didn't get one get please pick one up! If you are in Tokyo it is being sold at the Tokyo American Club and the Leica Store in Ginza.

Goal #3 Hold a ShootTokyo Portfolio Show

I ended up being able to do a showing of my images at Tokyo Photo 2014. This is so far beyond my expectations when I set this goal. You can read about opening night and how this all came to be here.

#4 Continue to consistently study Japanese

I did 'ok' on this one but I am not satisfied. I need to do more in 2014.

#5 Remember to show my wife every day how much I love her

I hope I did well but that's for my wife to decide.

When I think about all I can accomplish with ShootTokyo while maintaining a very demanding job I think it boiling down to living life with a bias for action. Focus on doing vs. planning. Focus on action vs. talking. Tomorrow I will set my new goals for the year. I expect they will continue to be aggressive and likely include my YouTube Channel...

On to my last post of 2014...and the continuation of my day with Dennis and Marysol.

Today's Configuration: Leica M Monochrom with a Summicron 28mm f/2.0.