As this year of 2008 draws to a close,  I’m sure we can all say it was a nutty year. Lots of bad things happened worldwide but lots of great things happened in my personal life. To me the glass is always half full. Three days before 2009 and I am grateful for  a ton of different things in my life.  I can’t complain about my personal life and never really ever did anyways.  What’s the point complaining about something if you don’t do anything to fix it? I’m content with what I have and ever had, even if it was nothing. Life isn’t complete with cash, you need a great personal life to feel truly happy. Being materialistic is lame, even though I have a few nice things overall I don’t care too much for big pricey things. Hell, I still buy $15 pairs of  Bongo jeans. What are Bongo jeans, exactly. No name nothings, that no one knows about and I don’t really care.

So What Am I Grateful For Ending 2008?

1. Having an AWESOME wife, who actually likes cooking and does everything that most girls now a days are way too lazy to do. Wow, she even bakes cookies?! She’s also tons of fun to be with and is always easygoing and optimistic. No negative sh*t, the perfect woman for me.
2. My kids –  I never thought I would be a dad and now that I am it’s very hard to imagine life without those little runts. I really look forward to every minute with them.
3. My financial success – With all the doom around the economy, every month is better and better for me. It sucks that economy in the U.S  is in the sh*tter, but it will not last forever, that is for sure. Be frugal, I always have and it’s the best thing to do even in  a good economy. Why waste money?
4. I’m glad that I am healthy and able to enjoy the life I have, without health it’s tough to enjoy your life. Enjoy yourself while you are young, you don’t know what the future holds for you.
5. My mom and dad – Both great people who have been there for me and are now there for my kids, they love them and it’s cool to see my kids have tons of fun with my own parents.

What Does 2009 Hold?

On a global scale I’m not sure what to expect, I can just view what happens worldwide. But the worlds problems don’t get me down, far from it. Personally I expect to continue affiliate marketing, in one form or another. It’s a gravy train that is still full of fuel, I’m here for the ride. I expect to continue increasing my revenues. I also am going to purchase at least 3 more rental properties for 2009, probably more. But, I like to be realistic with my goals, so I know for a fact that I will each them.  I reached my 2008 goals and 2009 will not be any different at all, better actually.

1. Buy 3 more rental properties (at least probably more..), possibly buy a condo for each of my children as well. Why invest in RESP’s (registered educational savings plan), when you can buy real estate? No thanks!
2. Keep the affiliate train rolling – mo money, mo money, mo money………
3. Keep up my fitness routine of bike riding and more walking as well. I can’t bike right now cause of the snow but when that goes , then I’m back on my mountain bike.

On a larger scale I would like all people in the world to be happy ( world peace), but with corrupt governments in  basically every country it’s a tough goal to meet.  What are you thankful for in 2008 and what are your goals for 2009?

I’m all hears, leave a comment!!

I’m waiting……………

Sue me, I have too much time on my hands if I can take digital photos of Christmas decorations at Michael’s. My wife had to go buy some “much needed” scrap booking supplies at Michael’s, so I went along for the ride… What is a guy to do inside a Michaels store? I mean seriously…. I had my trusty Canon SD750 by my side (wif’es purse actually), so I began snapping photos. People probably thought I was some creepy dude getting off looking at Christmas decorations, who knows right? I guess it does look a bit f*cked if you see a 30 year old guy snapping photos in a craft store. Anyhoo, I took some cool closeups of Christmas decorations in the store while I was waiting for my wife to choose scrap book paper, oh the joy!

Actually near Christmas I don’t mind going into Michael’s , the place is basically a massive Christmas decorators paradise. Yeah this is a booring post, I have nothing to say OK? Take a look at the coool photos below and then beat it!

….Oh yeah, I get to bike ride to the coffee shop on Kingsway in Burnaby and it might snow, wee how will that be!?

When I woke up, I seemed to be having a dream about Morgan Freeman being my friend. I have no clue why I had a dream about Morgan Freeman, I think he’s an awesome actor but that’s about it. Then even though I was awake I still wasn’t and my mind wandered and in this new dream I was reading a blog post I wrote about my previous graffiti life. This post doesn’t even exist but I will write it right now, enjoy.

When I started doing graffiti in Vancouver I was only 12 years old back in 1982. It was near impossible to find any type of graffiti photography anywhere, including the library. The year later I believe, a book called Subway Art came out that changed everything for my small world. That book was my bible and I had it with me all the time. I studied the New York subway graffiti pieces as if I was having a final exam on them.

As with all things in life practice makes perfect, so I would draw all the time and try to mimic the great New York graffiti masters of the time such as “Seen”, “Dondi”, “Duster” and “Skeme”. It was pretty tough to get where I wanted to be with my graffiti skills, but I never gave up. It pissed me off so much that my stuff looked like crap that I tried harder and harder. Eventually I had the graffiti talent I was craving. I had an interesting skill that very few people had outside of New York, let alone Canada or anywhere else in the world.

Eventually my paper practice got boring and I need to do the “real thing”. I started venturing around the Collingwood area in East Vancouver. Back in the early 1980s the SkyTrain wasn’t even built and there were no condo apartments on Vanness street which runs parallel to the SkyTrain between Joyce street and Boundary Road. There were tons of warehouses and I practiced my hand at doing a wall. It turned out pretty good for a little kid from Vancouver learning this stuff on his own.

Graffiti taught me many things that I never really realized would help until later on in my life. Everyone said that I was wasting my time. Realistically it depends on how you look at it. For me I never got in any real trouble for it, luckily. I however did learn some traits that I still use to this day.

1. Never give up – Even though I was terrible at doing graffiti in the beginning I stuck it through because I really wanted it to work out. I wanted to be good at graffiti for some reason. Fast forward to 2008, I am the same way. When I want something not much can or will stand in my way, that’s an awesome trait to have. I never give up I just get pissed off, I mumble and I move forward. I hate being sh*tty at anything so I work long hours so I get good fast at whatever it is I’m into at the present time.
2. Resourcefulness – I order to survive in any business and in graffiti you need to be resourceful and have some way to adapt. Many times police would find out about the “artwork” and we had to find new locations to paint on. Part of the process was to scour “spots” (places to paint), under bridges, abandoned walls and so on. I had a pretty good gift for finding graffiti spots all the time. I took that trait and I can usually find a way to make money from any type of topic I start researching from loans, car accessories etc. I can find what many other people cannot find,  and make it work. That is a huge skill in a competitive world.
3. Dedication – I saw many kids come ago when I was a graffiti artist. Most people where never dedicated to getting good at graffiti, I like some others were. It was important to me that my “pieces” looked good. i tried to make them look as good as possible. I didn’t see the point in writing on walls if it looked like junk. Personally I really wanted to make the place look better not worse. I dedicated lots of my free time to drawing and also painting the “perfect piece”.

When most people look at graffiti art they don’t think of it the way the way I do. You need a certain type of person to be good at ANYTHING, sure you may have the “knack for it”. Even if you have the knack you still need dedication, resourcefulness and determination to name a few. For me I am thankful I spent my years doing an illegal activity that turned into something that guided me through my life and continues to do so. No, I no longer paint graffiti art, but the memories and the life skills I learned from those years are very much with me and I use them daily in my Internet business.

Oh yeah I also learned tons of design skills from my graffiti art… If I never did graffiti, I’m not really sure where I would be today, it’s pretty crazy but it’s true. It’s weird how graffiti guided me to where I am today and then of course now it’s veering off into real estate. Life is funny that way, you never know where it will take you.

I’m not really sure why I wrote this post but like I said it came to me in a dream, while I was kind of awake…. weird yeah.