2007 year of maturity

If 2006 was the year of change, then 2007 is the year of maturity. I have gained a general direction in life as well as the confidence in achieving the objectives I set for myself. Gone are the sense of loss which usually accompanies the search for a purpose in life.

Goals

I pretty much failed all the new year resolution I’ve set for myself, but a lot of it can be blamed on my naïveté and a general lack of purpose with which I set them. The goal I set for 2008 will be more purposeful and realistic using the knowledges that I have gained about myself and my supposed limits. I am abiding by my established limit in order to charge up on energy reserves until the time when a raison d’être comes to me and I deem it to be worthy of my devotion. I will then, burn myself out like I did when I joined a startup to get it.

Finances

My net worth is in shambles as this year sees the collapse of US financial system. It just happens to be my rookie year in investing. Same bad luck as graduating engineering only to come face to face with the tech bubble. A general observation I made on my own life is that I can always assume the worst outcome on any luck based event. I don’t believe in superstition, but I do believe in management of luck. I should start expecting the worst on my first tries and plan my strategies accordingly. I started the year expecting at most 10% growth of my portfolio. Yet I surprised myself when I reached that goal half way through. So the second half the year sees me adjusting my portfolio into a more aggressive one. I now plan on a 3 year 30% growth and invest with stocks that has that potential.

Some good news on my financial front. It seems to me that my analysis was correct and I have bought in a year where real estate properties saw a 10% growth and is projected to have another 3.8% growth next year. It is slowing down but is not going to die. Last I checked, unless you are a first time home buyer, a 20% down is still necessary for a new house and the bank’s credit check process is still solid enough to drive me to the brink of craziness. I can actually afford this place without needing to take in an extra flat mate to help pay the rent. Very non-frugal of me. How long will my analysis remain correct? I don’t know, but it certainly won’t encounter the same mess as in the US for the near 3 year.

Projects

My site has grown past my expectation in terms of what I wanted it to be. I also acquired a new skill as well as gaining insight in tuning my own body’s schedule when I went through the Triphasic Sleep experiment. I can now go through a day with as little sleep as 3 hours and perform my duties with the same sharpness as if I had a full night’s sleep. Grogginess, is a human concept. Believing in it is a gate that limits your own level of wakefulness. In reality, once the internal gate limiting my conscious control of sleep is opened, I found that consciousness the distribution of energies to different part of your self. You can direct all effort into feeling awake and make you feel refreshed, but that takes energy away from say, analysis. It’s an old concept often discussed in Chinese martial art, except they deal mostly with the physical. What I’ve been talking about is the manipulation of consciousness. It is not, however, a license to ignore sleep all together. The experimental observation is that wakefulness has properties like a battery. You can deplete it, but it must be charged up afterwards.

Conclusions

It’s a good year. I am more and more comfortable with the idea of spending money to get my projects going. I think part of the reason why most of my projects didn’t get completed was because I was too frugal. Then again, I didn’t have these projects in motion at the beginning of the year either. I definitely need to work on my goals, especially the part where I want to get my six pack. The personal goal front seems to be my biggest failure. Finance wise, I am fine, only $7,000 away from equality of assets vs liabilities although most of my stocks tanked.