My 2017 : The Story of Achievements & Failures!

I remember how my year started. The first week was a trip to Karachi with colleagues. Traveling and discovering new places is something I enjoy. Learning is one more thing I don't want to stop. In fact, I sacrificed three days of my trip to attend a workshop on communication skills. Pictures are included in the post.

PS: Regardless of the results, I thank @anomadsoul for arranging the #My2017 contest. This post is inpired by this contest. It is an incredible chance to review our year and share with the community. If you participate (link resteemed on my blog), do share your links with me in the comments below. I will read, upvote and, may be, resteem it.

My 2017 : Achievements

Let me highlight three of the achiements which I am extremely satisfied with.

1. Supported Education of Two Kids

Millions of kids in Pakistan are still out of school. Hundreds of them are around us, living lives of uncertainity and risk. In April 2016, I started an initiative called Educate One Child to encourage people to educate at least one child who is out of school or has dropped out due to economical reasons.

Logo of Educate One Child initiave created by me.

More than a dozen children have received financial support needed to continue/start their education. I have sponsored two children, both girls, during the whole year. There were three other kids, all girls again, who I supported partially but they were mainly being funded under the umbrella of Educate One Child by two of my close friends.

This, by far, is the most satisfying of my 2017 achievements. Continuing support to these two children, as well as adding more deserving cases to the list, will remain my priority in 2018 as well.

2. Completing Goal of Reading 10 Books

Reading at least ten books in was one of the highly prioritized goals of my new year back in January. Reading is part of the learning process. It not only enhances my perspective, but also helps in making me better as a person.

My 2017 Goals - I will refer to them again and again in the post.

I have read nine already and have fifteen days, if life remains, to complete reading the tenth. I am planning to read either Alchemist or Think & Grow Rich. Here's the list of the books I read so far.

1. Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
2. The Mastery Manual - Robin Sharma
3. Linchpin - Seth Godin
4. الرحیق المختوم (The Seald Nectar)
5. The Richest Man in Babylon - George S. Clason (August)
6. Zero to One - Peter Thiel (19 September)
7. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (30 November)
8. یا خدا - قدرت اللہ م شہاب (Dear God)
9. Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom (15 December)

Next year too, I will have a reading goal at a high priority and increase the number to 12 to make it one book per month. As long as I live, I wish to expand my reading experience.

3. Reaching 1000 Steem and 60 Reputation on Steemit

I was not on Steemit when the goals were written originally. I was a blogger and had blogging goals of reaching 2000 daily visitors and have 1000 subscribers. When I joined Steemit in June 2017, my personal blog became of secondary importance to my Steemit blog. So, I set Steemit goals instead.

Within a week of joining Steemit, I created a Steemit tutorial on my personal blog and kept updating it for accuracy. It's the last post of my blog since then.

So, I set a target to have at least 1000 Steem (Steem+Steem Power) in my account by end of this year. I achieved the target in November. Then I set the target of achieving 1000 SP alone. I achieved it yesterday.

Exactly 1000 SP owned by me. Now increased of course.

One major target is to achieve reputation score of 60 with my blogging and community efforts. I have never relied on voting bots; except for a period of test and trial. Right now, I am at 59.208 and I do hope to get past 60 before 2017 ends.

Steemnow.com is an amazing tool. Thanks to @penguinpablo fro creating it!

Of course I know that I do not control when my reputation increasese to 60 or when my SP increases to a certain number. But I do know that I control the effort needed to make sure these targets make progress. That is why I encourage everyone to value their work and never stop working.

Steemit is the best thing that happened to me in 2017. I just cannot thank this community enough.

Next year is going to be the defining year for Steemit (I will soon write a post explaining why) and I am sure that it will be a big big year for me as well. I will keep chasing small targets and achieving them on Steemit.

I talked about the travel trip with colleagues in the beginning. These are some memories from it.

That's it for the achievements. Now is the time to talk about rough and tough stuff.

My 2017 : Failures

Their are some failures which in reality are lessons. Some are harmles but there are some failures which devastate and crush. My 2017 was full of all kinds. I will record two of the most significant ones here.

1. Not Getting Married

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be married by 25 years of age. That was an ideal for me. When I joined the job, it turned out that I had to marry at the age of 26. Both these ages are gone. I am already heading towards 28.

To talk about the failure, I was about to tie the knot. If you read the word Nikah on my goals list, it means contract of marriage. And I was about to do that...ummm...last month. Well, it didn't happen because...may be...it wasn't meant to be.

It qualifies to be the number one failure and by far the most devastating because of the year(s) long relationship behind it. Anyway, there's no option except to move on, and right now to the next failure.

Not Losing Weight

Instead, I gained some. It seems harmless but t disturbs me. I am a fantastic footballer (soccer for Americans) from the past. I am a 100 meter race champion. I am, rather was, an athlete and sportsman of genuine repute.

I wish to play... I just don't want it enough.

Now?

I am just getting fat. Week by week. Inch by inch. The whole year has passed and I have done nothing; except a good month in June when I fasted, swam, played football and got back in good shape. It all got wasted due to my laziness. Epic failure!

I have 15 days left and writing this motivates me to get going on this goal for one last time. I am 74+ kg right now and need to get to 69 Kg to become good again. Wish me luck!

How was Your 2017?

I feel good to have shared with you the ups and downs of my 2017. Would you share yours with the community as well? If you do, leave your link in the comments below. I want to read and reward your contributions.

If you think this post deserves to be seen by more people, please resteem and upvote.

Yours,

Ilyas Tarar