Goals are funny things.

On one hand, a goal is an incredibly helpful tool to give your actions, behaviours, and thoughts direction, thereby giving your life purpose. Reaching a goal is an incredibly uplifting experience, both when the goal is met with praise from your peers, and even when all you have is the silent, personal knowledge that you’ve completed something you’ve set out to do.

On the other hand, goals can take you, taunt you, kick the crap out of you when you are down and realize you haven’t met the goal you’ve set out to accomplish, and spit in your face when that realization is made public.

I’ve set goals for myself in the past. Some I have kept to myself, others I’ve shared either with close personal friends or even through a blog or other public means. I’ve talked before about my goal to lose weight (a goal I realized this week I need to reengage in my life), paying off my personal debt, and attempting a few new things. Not every goal is met, not every goal is as fleshed out as the others in my head.

A couple of months ago, I brought my bike to work in my car. The plan was to attempt to ride home afterwards (about 20 km), to see whether it was a viable way of getting to work in the morning.

As I set out, a couple of obstacles got in my way. First, I didn’t quite dress for the occasion. I was wearing jeans, and had a pair of shorts in my bag. Neither were quite suited for the long, windy ride that night. Second, a need to first head to a mall in the North end of London, only 7 km away from work, however going to the mall added an additional 7 km, making the whole trip about 34 km.

I didn’t make it home. I ended up about 9 km from home, at just after ten o’clock at night, with no lights on my bike and no lights on the street.

I was done.

I called up my dad, and he came to take my battered and sore body and bike home. I felt this odd sensation of pride that I’d come so far, yet discouraged that I didn’t finish what I had set out to do. Needless to say, I didn’t try it again.

In a lot of ways, this episode represents how a lot of things in my life have gone up until now. I set out to accomplish something great, get a good start on it and, in some cases, almost get to the finish, and then come up short. It has happened with college, music, weight loss, projects I’ve set out to do, skills I’ve set out to learn, relationships.

I’m the king of coming up short.

Yet, I paid off my debt. A big, audacious goal that I didn’t think I could accomplish, but with the help and encouragement of loved ones and a bit of self discipline was able to pay it all down, with money in the bank and a better outlook for my finances in the future.

All of this to say, I guess I’m sort of reevaluating where to go next. What goals in my past have I given up on prematurely, that with a little bit of gumption and get-go could be accomplished? What do I want my life to look like in a year? Two years? Five years? Ten years?

I’m gonna take some time over the next couple of weeks to map out some goals I think I can accomplish, and share that process here. It could be sloppy, messy. I may not do things the way others would. But, and maybe I’m wrong here, I personally believe that our personal experience is heightened when we are able to share our experiences with others.

Goal No 1: live a life of adventure, something worth sharing with those who care to read.

On to the adventure.

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Over the past few weeks I have become increasingly interested in user interface design, and even more specifically icon design. I have never had the opportunity to create an icon, and wanted to give it a shot.

A couple weeks ago I began using Fluid.app for my absolutely favourite online music service, Grooveshark. I tried searching for a good icon to use, however came up short. On Friday I opened up Photoshop, and took to the task myself.

Using the amazing Grooveshark logo developed by the incredible David Pache, I took to designing the icon. I wanted to make sure I adhered as best I could to Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), and made sure to include appropriate lighting and shadows.

Special thanks to John Ashenden for his advice and encouragement.

To use the icon for your own Grooveshark app, download the .zip file and follow the included instructions.

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One of my goals before moving my blog over to Tumblr was to increase the level of personal content that I was posting. While I enjoy posting my thoughts on technology, business, strategy, music, and more, I also want to share different aspects of my life with others.

A while ago I noticed a few people who were using their iPhones to take and edit pictures, and uploading them to Tumblr. I realized that no matter where I was, I could take a quick snapshot of what I’m up to, do a quick edit, and post it to Tumblr immediately using the Tumblr iPhone app [iTunes link].

The same could be done with the WordPress app, however the process isn’t nearly as seamless. With the Tumblr app, I take a picture, save it, click to post a photo, enter a description, and Tumblr takes care of the rest. I have even seen it post photos quicker to Tumblr than the Facebook app takes to post a simple status update (I’ve had it take over a minute… brutal).

That this whole Tumblr system is so seamless, so well thought out, really makes it hard to argue against using a hosted solution for blogging. Aside from some minor potential security issues (which really are likely dealt with more thoroughly than on a self-hosted blog), there really seem to be few downsides that I’ve experienced as a Tumblr user.

Aside from full-fledged client websites, I can’t see myself going back to a self-hosted solution anytime soon.

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I was never great at sports. I was good. I played on a lot of competitive hockey, baseball, and volleyball teams throughout my youth. I never won anything huge, though. No provincial championships, no MVP awards, no All-Star teams.

I have never had major success with music. I’ve played in numerous bands, and have had the opportunity to travel parts of Canada and the US, as well as record a few albums. I’ve played with a number of fantastic bands, but haven’t really “made it” in any real sense.

One thing I’ve been very good at, however, is failing. I’ve made more mistakes than I could ever begin to expound in this short space. Some mistakes I’ve learned from, others I seem to repeat endlessly until I simply give up trying to correct myself.

One of those mistakes I kept making until about a year ago was with regard to my money.

When I was in high school I got a job in the tenth grade at a grocery store. I worked about 30 hours a week, which combined with school and the reality of living in a small town left very little time to really spend any of the money I was making. By the time I moved on three years later, I had saved up enough to buy my grandmother’s car, which I bought off her estate when she passed away.

Saving when you live at home in a small town is easy. It takes little discipline, because unless you can get to the closest city, the most you’re going to spend money on is food, which I could avoid most of the time by eating recently expired sandwiches from the store deli. The biggest items I purchased in high school were my guitars and a few guitar accessories.

When I left for college, I had no idea how to manage my money. I didn’t get a job, even though looking back I realize that time spent playing xbox likely could have been better spent doing something a little more productive. The food at college was absolutely horrible and they did not provide us with a student card that could be transferred to neighbouring food services, so we were either stuck eating deep fried k-rap every day, or spending money on something at least mildly fresher from Subway across the street.

I gave a lot of my money to Subway.

When I dropped out of college, I got a job at the grocery store I worked at through high school. After about six months of that, I quit and joined a band that took me around Ontario and the US. Those four months were some of the most memorable months of my life.

At the end of those four months, I had $12 in my bank account.

Fast forward just under a year, I had been hired by a church in Central Ontario as the music pastor. I was hired through a contract, which meant I wasn’t paying taxes on anything I was earning. I lived in the home of a sweet lady and her son, renting a room for a few hundred a month. I was working quite a bit, most weeks 50-60 hours a week, which didn’t leave a lot of time to prepare my own meals (not that I would know what to do anyway).

I ate out.

A lot.

I also bought a new bike, a pedal case for my guitar pedals, a MacBook, paid for personal training, and likely purchased a few other things as well.

At the end of my year in Barrie, I had saved nothing.

And owed over $5000 in taxes.

I had about $2000 on my credit card.

And owed my father about $5000.

$12,000 in the hole.

Thankfully, my dad is brilliant with his money. When my parents were 30 (5 years before I was born), they retired.

At 30.

My dad was incredibly helpful with helping me come up with a plan. The plan was:

• figure out what expenses I had, such as phone, car, gas, etc.
• figure out how much spending money I’d need per week.
• cut that figure in half.
• live on next to nothing (I lived at home, and had food and board paid for at about $100 per month. Love my parents.)
• put everything else towards paying down my debt.

This was a hard adjustment for me. I had lived as though my debit card had no end. Starbucks stops, Subway lunches, trips to the movies and paying for dates were part of daily life.

I signed up for a PC Financial credit card, which at the time was offering to transfer your credit balance from another card at a rate of 0.99% for 6 months. During those six months, I put my money towards my tax debt, as it had a higher interest rate. When the six months were up, I split my payments.

My credit card was paid in a matter of a couple months.

My tax debt was paid off not long after.

The only debt remaining was with my father, who agreed to a payment plan of $200 every two weeks until things were paid off. The difference between that amount and my expenses/spending money were put into savings.

In July of this year, I was able to purchase a MacBook Pro, fully loaded.

With cash.

This past month, having ensured that I had enough saved up in my emergency fund, I made the decision to accelerate my payments towards my debt with my dad.

Two payments later, and as of last Wednesday I am completely debt free.

At the end of it all, there was no award ceremony. There were no cheering fans. There were no autographs to sign (not even on a cheque; I paid cash).

Just the feeling of pride of having accomplished the greatest task I had ever set out to achieve.

I got my life back in order.

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I’ve found my way back to Tumblr, and I have a strong feeling that this time, it’s permanent.

When I first got into blogging, I started on the Xanga platform. The Xanga Platform had two really important things going for it:

1. A simple to use platform, and
2. The emphasis on community and conversation through its groups and subscriptions.

Xanga made sharing ideas and connecting others with similar interests very easy. It had a very simple interface for posting blog posts, uploading photos and videos, dialoguing with friends, and more. It had its own built in “feed reader,” where you were able to subscribe to your favourite xanga blogs right in the app itself. It had its own templating system, which, while a bit confusing to those without any coding experience, did in fact allow for some very interesting designs. (One of my very first designs ever was for a friend’s Xanga blog. As of today, at least, it is still viewable.

After a while, however, Xanga began to become very cluttered, both with ads, as well as with an increasingly convoluted features set. Slowly but surely, I found myself wanting for something I had more control over.

I got some free server space from a friend in the UK and installed WordPress for the first time. It was my first experience with anything database related, let alone any amount of php. I moved slowly but surely, designing my own theme for the site. In a matter of a couple of weeks comprised of much trial and error, as well as the insight of the WordPress community, I had a fully customized theme just for my blog. A year or two later, I had developed a couple more themes for the blog and had learned quite a bit about the WordPress platform.

With the knowledge I gained from this experience, I designed a few websites using WordPress as the content management system. One in particular didn’t even have a blog section, and used the “posts” to power a directory.

As my blogging adventures continued, I began to follow blogs such as Shawn Blanc, Michael Mistretta, Kyle Baxter, and others who not only posted full articles, but also posted links to other sites in the blogosphere. This community also introduced me to Tumblr for the first time, a hosted platform that allows users to quickly aggregate content from all over the web. Tumblr blogs by those such as Chris Bowler, Jorge Quinteros, Minimal Mac, Marco Arment and David Kaneda helped me see just how powerful Tumblr can be.

I first gave Tumblr a shot a few months ago, however with my WordPress blog still running, I was struggling to determine which posts to send where. As my WordPress blog was gaining a stronger readership, I made the decision to focus solely on it. However, my method of posting different types of posts quickly became as convoluted as my old Xanga blog, and my frustration began to increase.

Frictionless

What I absolutely love is that, for the most part, Tumblr is frictionless. My Tumblr blog is hosted by Tumblr. Tumblr has assigned several different post types, each of which can be displayed differently using simple CSS and Tumblr’s very simple theming engine. Posting is a click or keyboard shortcut away using either Tumblr’s keyboard shortcut or MarsEdit’s recent inclusion of Tumblr support.

Not only is Tumblr frictionless as far as posting goes, but the ability to join and participate is equally fluid. Every Tumblr page has a “follow” button (which, in my mind, is infinitely more user friendly than “Subscribe to RSS”). “Reblogging” allows users to share their favourite posts from other authors instantly (my only concern with this feature is the abuse it appears to sometimes produce, though that is hardly the fault of the feature).

The only feature I wish Tumblr featured was an import option, because with this new desire to pursue this new direction comes a hard decision.

Letting Go

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be making the shift from running my main blog with a self-hosted installation of WordPress to Tumblr. This isn’t an easy move to make, as I am proud of the traffic my old blog has been getting. However, I am not one to hang on to the past if it infringes on my future, and so it is time to make the tough decision to let go.

My plan then is to leave my WordPress blog hosted at archives.patdryburgh.com, while my Tumblr blog will takeover patdryburgh.com. At some point this week, I will also update my Feedburner feed to reflect the change, however those subscribed to http://patdryburgh.com/feed/ may need to update their subscriptions.

I’ll be sure to keep you all up to speed with the transition. For now, wish me luck!

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I currently have the thickest beard I’ve ever had, which, while for the general population may not seem so thick, is keeping me cozier and warmer than any beard before.

Also, I have a sick neck beard.

I have not had Starbucks in a few weeks now, and it’s starting to affect my mental performance. I’m positive that brain connections are powered by the sweet, sweet caffeine provided in a Grande Non-Fat Extra Hot No Water Tazo Chai (written out for anyone who would like to pick one up for me).

I had lunch today with my friend James. We realized today we had not seen each other since around early August, and we clearly had not done a very good job keeping up with each other’s lives. He was unaware that I am once again single, and I was unaware he had grown an eighth of an inch of hair. He’s already wearing a toque.

Last night, I completed the greatest accomplishment of my life. I thought I would have had it finished last week, but due to unforeseen circumstances it had to be put off a few days. I will be writing a separate post tonight or tomorrow when I get a chance. I’ve decided: no more promises on this blog. I just break them all the time.

This site looks like crap right now. Maybe you hadn’t noticed, because you were wise and subscribed through the RSS Feed. If you haven’t, and are reading this on this crappy website, I am sorry.

Went to an incredible show last night, where I was introduced to one of my new favourite artists, Robyn Dell’Unto. Her voice is angelic, her humour is brazen, and her songs are delectable. I’ll hopefully have more to write about her and the other artists from last night soon.

This blog is getting kind of personal, which I’ve struggled with internally for a while now. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry but I don’t see it getting any better in the near future. My parents like keeping up with my life, and while I still live at home, sometimes it’s just easier to write things down.

More to come.

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This morning, dust cloaked the city of Sydney, Austraila, causing an unprecedented red haze. Apparently, with droughts affecting most of South Australia and winds picking up over the night, the dust was carried and blanketed the city as the sun rose.

Daniel Mutter, a buddy of mine living in Sydney right now, writes:

I woke up to discover all the windows in my house were glowing. I almost thought it was the end of the world, then as I gained consciousness I realized it was just the most amazing sky ever.

Daniel took some photographs of the city. These photographs are not edited in any way. The colour is real.

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As a number of people seemed to enjoy my last attempt at summarizing my life in bite-size morsels, I bring to you:

The Good:

• Things at work have been incredibly busy. While it hasn’t always been fun, it’s definitely a good feeling in these economic times to work at a place that seems as strong as ever. We’ve got some new, exciting clients that we are working with that have some very cool projects coming down the pipe.
• After a more than six month hiatus from music, I started jamming again with some friends. We only got to practice once, however it inspired me to
• Play my first live show. My friends in Hello Kelly asked me to pinch-hit on guitar for a show in Ottawa, and it was incredible. I’ve never had so much fun playing music. There were lights, video, a huge sound system, and a couple hundred people out. It was a lot of fun. I also got to try
• My new amp! So, this was a funny story. I went to the music store around the corner from work one day, and sitting in the corner of the electric guitar section looked to be a Vox AC30 with a single 12” speaker. My dream amp for a while now has been an AC30 with two 12s, but I thought I’d give this one a shot. I picked up my dream guitar and plugged it in, and instantly fell in love. I put a down payment on it that day, and went back a couple days later with the balance. However, when I pulled it out of the corner, my friend Simon pointed out that this was not a single 12 Vox AC30, but a 2x12” Vox AC30. My dream amp! The best part, it was lightly used in some guy’s living room, so I picked it up for less than a grand! Definitely a great day.
• A few days ago, my friend Jason Soloduik asked if I would be interested in playing some guitar for his band. I’ve been a fan and a friend of Jason’s for a few years now, and knew I had to jump at the chance. I have my first rehearsal this Thursday night in Brantford, and then our first show this Saturday night in Brantford at New Covenant Church (22 Holiday Drive). If you’re in the area, it’d be great to see you out! The show is free, with doors at 7pm.
• Last week I had the chance to go to Chicago for a trade show for work. I love Chicago, and think it’s one of the best cities I’ve ever been to. The art throughout the city is amazing. We went to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field on Monday night, which was an awesome experience. I’d love to spend a whole week there with nothing to do but explore.
• A friend of mine invited me to see Kings of Leon on Sunday night at the JLC, which I gladly accepted! It was really an impressive show. Having only heard their latest album, I wasn’t aware they were such a rock band. Definitely want to pick up their older albums now that I’ve heard some of their older material.
• I have some more incredibly exciting news to share, but that will be coming at the end of the week. I kid you not, it’s the biggest achievement I’ve ever made in my life, and I can’t wait to share it with you.

The Bad

• Of course, not everything in life is rosey. I’m not feeling so hot right now, mostly because I have been working a lot. Not just at work, but also on a big project I was super excited to be working on, until
• I got screwed. I don’t want to get into details, but basically I had started working on the biggest project I’ve ever taken on, only to have the client back out part way through. Thankfully I am not out any money, just the time I put into the project. I am thinking about writing a post about the business lessons I learned through this experience, but I need to be in a less emotional state about the situation before I do.

That’s about it for this edition of “My Life in Bullet Form.” If you’d like to keep seeing these types of updates, let me know either through email or through Twitter. I hear that’s where the cool kids are these days.

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Back in elementary school I started my first rock band. Myself and a few friends would lug our gear down to our drummer’s basement and hack away at our favourite songs by Green Day, Metallica, Silverchair, The Offspring. For the first year our only fan was our drummer’s mom, though her favourite part was when we were finished and her ears could rest.

Once we had pulled together a fairly lengthy repertoire of songs, my girlfriend at the time asked us to perform at her birthday/Hallowe’en party. About 30 of our friends crammed into an old Anglican church in town, and we played music for a couple hours. Everyone was dancing, having a great time. Even the adult chaperones were enjoying the performance from the kitchen where the walls could deafen the decibel level to a tolerable level.

This was my first real live performance, and from then on, I was addicted.

Throughout high school and into college, I continued to perform live at parties, county fairs, bars, churches, living rooms and even a grocery store parking lot. I grew to love the feeling of moving a crowd through multiple emotions in a set. After a show, I enjoyed connecting with old friends that had come out and meeting new people who had heard me for the first time.

A few years into performing, a shift began to take place. The faces of those who came out to shows became less familiar, to the point where I was playing shows in front of crowds of total strangers. Travelling through the US and around Ontario, the audience was no longer made up of people I sat next to in class and hung out with at recess. These people weren’t the people I could call up on a Wednesday night to hang out or watch TV. I was no longer playing for friends.

This shift was a hard one for me, not because I had any problem playing in front of strangers, but rather because I started to treat my friends differently. When I would have a bit of news I would tease my fans about through my website, I would do the same thing in person with my friends. When a friend asked what was new in my life, the first thing I would share would be where I was playing next, or I would drop a name of someone I had just opened for. Instead of sharing my life with my friends, I was selling them my music.

This all came to a head when I was in college. A good friend that I cared about a lot told me they couldn’t stand being around me. Not because she didn’t like my music, or because I was a bad person. It was because rather than treating her like a friend, I was treating her like a fan. My words and actions all had the goal of selling myself as the rock star I thought I was (but most definitely wasn’t).

This conversation left me with a bit of an identity crisis. I had built up this persona for several years, and had lived it out both on stage and off. Whether the persona was based in reality or not, I lived as though it was exactly who I was.

I still struggle to this day with the reality that while I am a performer, I am also a human being. I have not even come close to reaching any real level of fame, aside from a little recognition through music as well as this blog. I have to fight the urge to sell my persona to my friends. If I have something big to announce, I try to share it with as many friends as possible first, so that they know they are invited to be part of my life, not my performance.

It sucks when you think that you are someone’s friend, only to find out that to them, you’re simply just another fan.

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Please note: this post contains some commentary that reflects an emotional response to feeling let down by the London Ontario Police Department, as well as the Tucker and Taz show on FM96. These emotions are raw at the moment, but I wanted to make sure I got these feelings out in the open.

Dear Tucker and Taz,

This morning on the Tucker and Taz show on FM96, hosts Scott Tucker and Chris George (Taz) welcomed London, Ontario Police Chief Murray Faulkner on their show. Chief Faulkner was invited on to discuss issues of law enforcement in our city, as well as answer questions from callers. I had a question I wanted to ask the Chief, and so I called in to the show.

To give some background on the call, I need to go back a couple of years to when I was assaulted in downtown London. In 2007 I was visiting London while living in Barrie for Canada Day. I had spent a great day at the beach, at a movie and out for a drink at a London pub. At around 1:00am, I was walking along Talbot Street towards King Street where I had parked my car. On King Street, west of Talbot, a group of disorderly young adults were kicking garbage cans and yelling at people in the area, causing a disturbance.

As I approached King Street, one of the people in the group approached me, yelling obscenities and calling me derogatory names. I sped up to avoid confrontation. As I was crossing King Street, the person approaching me sucker punched me in the face, knocking me out and causing me to fall in the middle of the street. According to the woman I was walking with at the time, the assailant then kicked me in the face several times before leaving me, bloody and out cold, in the middle of the street.

Once the ambulance had come and taken me to the hospital, Officer Brown and Officer Campbell interviewed the woman I was with, who had witnessed the entire scene, as well as myself. I told the officers that I could not clearly remember what the attacker looked like, however they still pushed to get at least some descriptive information to help with the investigation.

The injuries sustained in the attack included a fractured orbital bone and a broken bone to the right of my right eye. My head felt like it was on fire, and I had to wait at least a couple of hours before receiving medication from the hospital as they ran X-rays and other tests.

I returned to Barrie after spending a day in the hospital and several days at home with my parents recuperating. About a week or so after the assault, I was told by the London Police that they had made an arrest, and had charged the suspect with Assault Causing Bodily Harm.

A few months later, I came back to London to give testimony at the trial. When I got to the courthouse, I was informed for the first time that there had been video evidence of the attack. However, apparently the defendant’s attorney had not received a copy of the evidence for review before the trial, so the trial was pushed back another month or so.

When I came back, I was asked to take the stand to give my recollection of the events. I was not introduced to the crown attorney, and believe from conversations with the investigating officers that they cared more about justifying their case than seeking justice for myself.

Both myself and the woman who witnessed the attacks gave our testimonies that morning. After the second testimony, the case was thrown out as the defendant did not match the description of the person we had described. As it turns out, the defendant had admitted to being present at the time of the attack, but was not the person who had assaulted me. In fact, the person who had assaulted me was, according to the defendant after the case, apparently at the house the police had arrested the defendant at the time of the arrest.

Since the trial, I have not received any correspondence from police, and have felt no closure to this episode in my life.

This brings me to this morning’s phone call. I did not call to discuss specifics of the case, but rather to simply gain an understanding of whether a case like mine would still be considered an open investigation. London Police have touted themselves in the media as protectors of the innocent, solving assault cases even years after the attacks. I was curious to know whether, even though a wrongful arrest had been made, if my case could still find some closure.

After describing in brief detail my situation, I was laughed at on live radio by Tucker, Taz, and Chief Murray Faulkner. When asked if I could give a description of the person who had attacked me, rather than listening to my response they made a joke that I had in fact been intoxicated at the time. When I tried to defend myself, I was cut off the air.

I was incredibly hurt and disgusted by how Tucker and Taz handled my phone call, and even more so by the way our London Chief of Police responded to me. I have been a loyal listener for the past year and a half I have been in London since my move back from Barrie, and yet I can say now that I will never again be supportive of your show, or any show on the Corus Radio network.

Sincerely,

Patrick Dryburgh

Update: I have just received responses from both Tucker and Taz. Neither outright apologized, but did indicate that they didn’t understand the full situation.

Also, I must admit that the radio may not have been the best venue for this type of inquiry. All I really wanted to find out was whether a case that results in a wrongful arrest is still considered open, and whether it is something that could be followed up on.

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