I would like to do these things...

School has started in Korea and everything is in full swing, except for English conversation classes at my middle school. My coworker and I have been biding our time at our desks for a couple of days now, and it seems likely it will be next monday at the earliest that we will resume teaching. All of this unexpected desk warming time has been somewhat for not, as I've not really done anything other than read political news from the United States and write one measly letter to my German pen pal. One of the things I've done while not doing anything else is to think about things I want to do and places I want to go. So here's today's topic: My 2012 Thimble list. These should be feasible goals that I want to complete in 2012. I hope they work.

• Save, Save, Save - It feels pretty good to have a pile of cash in the bank. My pile is small. I want it to be big.
• Go to Hong Kong. I want to see Kowloon Bay. I may also want to pretend I have awesome super powers like in that movie PUSH.
• Go to Japan. Even if its just Fukuoka. I need to go to Japan.
• Write a novel. For real. I think I can do it. I think I might even be able to write a salable novel. I have pretty strong writing chops when I apply myself, why shouldn't I be able to make something great on paper?
• Did I mention that I would also like to go to Jeju Island, Korea's largest island? No, I didn't.
• Mostly, I'd like to poop. I think that would be the greatest thing right now. (This is really a test to see if you're still reading. Are you?)

So that's my thimble list for 2012. I think I can scratch at least one of these off this afternoon. Now I'd like to share an awe-inspiring video that I saw on Laughing Squid today. It's a project by a venture capitalist and an 18 year old Romanian kid that wanted to get his own rocket science firm off the ground. I found it somewhat moving, maybe because of my latent desires to be an astronaut from way back when.

Another reason this might be inspiring is because an 18 year old kid with some technical knowledge and a buttload of gumption made something really cool happen. Why can't I make something really cool happen? Wait for it...there's no good reason why I can't make something good happen. Today's been a day with lots of stuff to think about that make me feel good about my prospects because I figure that if I get my wheels spinning hard enough I'll find traction in one direction or another and be able to continue the financial stability and health that I've been fortunate enough to have here in Korea well after I get home to the United States next year, get married, and settle in to start a family. Reading a little bit about this project on Startup Blog and it really got me thinking. With enough drive you can send a LEGO space shuttle to the very edge of space. Who knows what you can do with a lot of drive and a keyboard, or a ukulele, or a camera, or whatever? The sky isn't even the limit anymore, apparently.

So this caused a little reflection (I hate that word) on the time I spent managing a dive shop in Florida, and as we all know now, I live in Korea so the dive shop thing didn't really go so well. This article on the Huffington post seemed to really help me feel like I did things right. I was the manager, but there were 3 additional layers of bureaucracy on top of me, and they essentially snuffed out my ability to make decisions based on what worked and what didn't work. The article points out that people shouldn't be afraid to make mistakes because it stifles innovation. Well, I was afraid to make mistakes. In fact, I wasn't really ever allowed to make decisions based on what I knew. Instead of trying to find new things that worked, I was forced to try to make old things that didn't work succeed. That's the whole essence of the failure of that miserable dump of a job. Instead of change we just tried to be unsuccessful harder. In fact, it seems like I would have fit in at IKEA quite well. I find this extra hilarious because my boss at that job loved her IKEA shopping experience and furniture and was absolutely instrumental in destroying the ability of our own store to operate in such a fashion. It's a shame, but you know what, Fort Lauderdale, Florida is a bit of a place where old people go to die, and I'm not old yet.

Anyhow, this all comes back to the thimble list. I should do some things on that list. I know traveling to Hong Kong and Japan aren't exactly achievements, but writing a novel would be. Now the question is, how do I get organized enough to start.

P.S. This is an extraordinarily positive post considering how late I was up last night getting "great customer service" from a Bank of America wire services representative named Helen. Shame on you Helen, I'm sure you're a much nicer lady than you came off on the phone last night.