Like every year, I did less and more than I thought I would in 2011.
I visited New Zealand for the first time, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen in my life. I flew up in a helicopter and landed next to a pristine mountain lake inaccessible otherwise. Its beauty took my breath away. One of the highlights of the year, as well as my life. If there is a Heaven, it probably looks like this.
I lost my first car, a classic 1991 BMW E30. I loved little 20-year old Snoopy, and my dad was especially attached to her. Her gear-box had died and it didn’t make economical sense to repair her. My heart still aches a bit when I see old photos of her.
I got engaged during a lovely, happy weekend getaway.
I unearthed my purpose: “A life on purpose is one of fulfillment through growth and appreciation. It is a life of artistic expression and courageous exploration, inspired by love, wisdom and honor.”
I learned how to cook, both healthy and not so healthy dishes.
I revisited my friend the monk in Thailand and filmed an interview with him there. It was the fulfillment of a couple of dreams, and a risk taken on a new one. The final video interview isn’t perfect, but I’m proud of it and I gained more from the trip than I could have imagined beforehand. Thank God for dear, frank friends who pushed me out of my comfort zone and encouraged me to do it.
You’ve never seen Life Coaches Blog look so good.
She’s gone through a complete redesign, thanks to the Currents WordPress theme from WooThemes. This is how she used to look:
The previous, third-generation design of Life Coaches Blog.
This is how she looks now:
Life Coaches Blog, redesigned.
Why Revise a Dormant Site?
But you might wonder why I bothered revamping the site, since I’ve shuttered Life Coaches Blog since 2008 and have no intentions to continue posting there.
Over 100,000 Visits in 2011
The main reason is that Life Coaches Blog still gets a good amount of traffic, even though it’s nowhere near when the site was still active. On average, Life Coaches Blog received 11,816 visits per month this past year. Posts like What You Didn’t Know About Bruce Lee’s Kick-Ass Success, 9 Keys to Overcoming Difficult Times and Getting Your Life on Track remain popular.
Besides these three articles, there are over 500 personal development posts still freely available on the site. But the previous design of Life Coaches Blog didn’t showcase the wealth of articles very well, it simply showcased posts in a reverse chronological order.
The new Currents theme changes that, the home page layout shows you more posts at a glance across multiple categories, not just the most recent but also the most popular, recent category posts and highlighted posts. This should help new visitors find interesting posts around the site more easily.
When I was growing up, I loved the science fiction TV show Babylon 5. It had an epic story arc, intriguing characters and cool spaceships. It also had some interesting ideas, one of which was an alien proverb: “Understanding is a three-edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth.”
When I was growing up, I liked to see things in black and white. It made things easier to understand. I’m right, you’re wrong. It made life easier to go through, judging easier, justifications smoother.
Now that I’m older, I see that there are more shades of gray in the world than pure hues of black or white. That sometimes there are no completely right or wrong sides – you just have to pick a side and face the consequences.
Another saying, Japanese this time not extraterrestrial, goes: “Hell gapes beneath the upraised sword… Step in! And Heaven is your reward!”
In the past I used to say that I never had enough time to do everything I wanted to do. Now, after having said it enough times through the years I realize how true that statement is. I will never have enough time to do everything I want to do, because it’s easy to scale desires. It’s impossible, however, to increase the finite amount of time I will have on this planet.
Yes, I can always increase my chances of living longer by living better. But it doesn’t take away the fact that my life – my life, your life, everyone else’s life – is limited. You have x number of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and that’s it.
I’m reminded of something Paul Bowles wrote in The Sheltering Sky:
Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It’s that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don’t know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.
