As we move into a new year, my thoughts turn to the questions I have often asked myself

– What is the purpose of my life?
– What do I really want to do with it?

As always, I don’t have answers to any of these questions. I don’t know the purpose of my life or what I want to do with it. What I do know is that I haven’t done enough with my life, not nearly enough.

I am not an opponent of long term goals but to keep realistic I like to set goals for foreseeable future. Here is a list of twelve things I want to do before I celebrate the New Year in 2012.

Some of the things in the list seems challenging while few others looks impossible today. I’m putting the list up on my blog and will post about my progress on a quarterly basis. In the worst case, I’ll give up on the list in a few weeks. Even if don’t, I’ll probably be able to do less than ten things on the list by 2012. But, I will give my best shot to achieve all of them.

So, finally, without further ado, in no particular order, here are twelve things I want to do by 2012:

• Take my web startup to Red Herring 100 Asia.
• Achieve the Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVP) award.
• Buy a house in Seattle.
• Travel to least 12 countries I haven’t visited before.
• Cruise trip to Alaska with 2 weeks stay.
• Take a month off to drive cross country from Seattle to Boston.
• Take a hot-air balloon ride.
• Watch at least top 100 movies from the IMDB Top 250 Movies list.
• Learn French and start a new blog in French language.
• Put up an exhibition of my photography.
• Coffee with Bill Gates.
• Yet to decide
  

Do wish me luck!