41 Things I Did In My 41st Year

I usually do this kind of lists at the end of each year. I did one in 2009 and one in 2010. But, as I decided to change my approach towards these events, with my taming monkey challenge replacing my new year resolutions, I thought it would be wise to go further and move this list to my birthday. Exactly, today I’m marking my first year from my fifth decade. I will save you the usual “blah-blah” about how cool it is (although it is cool, you know) and get to the point.

1. Did My First Paragliding Flight

It was a tandem flight, early this spring in Christchurch, New Zealand. Been there just a couple a days before the earthquake. Learning to fly was perhaps the most important thing I did this year. Looking forward to try it again.

2. Got My First Tattoo

Another transformational experience – although one may argue that it wasn’t such a big deal, and, perhaps, according to one’s values system, one may be right. But for me, it was kinda of a big deal. Even wrote a blog post about getting your first tattoo.

3. Visited Hong Kong

On my way back from one of the trips in New Zealand I decided it was the time to stop a few days in Hong Kong. Didn’t write anything on the blog about it, but it was an amazing experience, especially because of the contrasts. Also, Victoria Park is easily among the top ten destinations in my agenda, anytime.

4. Ditched My Biggest Speaking Gig

In favor of my final divorce meeting, that is. I got called to speak at a Microsoft event, which included all the 250 middle and top managers of the Romanian operations, but as the events unfolded, turned out that my final divorce meeting was exactly at the same time. Went with the divorce, Microsoft may be out there for a while too, but the other opportunity may have not.

5. Got My Biggest Consulting Contract

In December last year. It was supposed to last for 6 months but it ended after 3. Nevertheless, it was a very important step for me, as it marked my re-entrance in the field, after my 2 year non-compete agreement (following my exit in 2008) expired.

6. Ate Raspberries From My Own Garden

A year before I ate strawberries from my own garden, so it was time to upgrade the game a little bit. I used to eat raspberries each time I was visiting my parents, so having them in my own backyard was a bit unusual. Nevertheless, they were equally tasty.

7. Rented My House

I used to be very reluctant to this idea. But the moment I realized I was living somebody else’s dream, the whole process unfolded very easily. I was able to find a tenant basically without searching, although the location of my former house was quite remotely and isolated.

8. Moved Into A Rented Apartment

By far the highlight of the last few months. It was a very important move for me, as it marked the beginning of a new phase. Not much tied up to a certain place, on any level (financial, emotional, you name it). It’s been almost a month since I did this and it’s getting better and better each day.

9. Started To Run

It was part of my taming monkeys routine, but it was an activity which lasted beyond the monthly challenge. Since I moved downtown I find it a little bit difficult to get myself out and run (perhaps because autumn stepped in too and it gets a bit colder in the morning) but I’m committed to continue this.

10. Started To Tame My Inner Monkeys

In other words, replaced my new year resolutions with a series of 12 monthly challenges, in which I intended to tame an inner monkey. This month is the month of relationships and believe me, I had quite a few breakthroughs in this area.

11. Had My First Holiday Outside The Country With My Daughter

We visited Switzerland and stayed at my sister, who lives there. Flying from Romania to Switzerland, changing planes in Germany, and everything in between, well, it was quite and adventure.

12. Made My First Promotion Video

If you visited my blog during the last 2-3 months you may have seen it. If you didn’t, here’s a direct link to YouTube. It has, at the moment of writing, more than 7500 views. Which, to be honest, is a bit mind boggling for me. It was an afternoon work with a friend, using a Cannon DSLR camera and a Mac.

13. Published Brilliantly Better, The Ebook

Well, the above video was made to promote one of my ebooks, namely Brilliantly Better, a collection of some of my most visited articles on this blog. Turned out the promotion video became way more popular than the ebook,

14. Published All My Ebooks On iBookStore And Kindle

It was really a huge undertaking. In the process, I also wrote an article on self-publishing, which turned out to be one of the most popular on the topic. More than 100 comments (at the moment of writing).

15. Got My First Publisher Agreement

As of October 2011, I sold the distribution rights for two of my ebooks to a Korean publisher. It was my first experience of that kind ever, and, regardless of the financial outcome (which may, or may be not huge) I’m incredibly happy I reached this point.

16. Got On Board Of WPSumo

It was one of my business goals for this year, to get on board of at least 3 companies. WPSumo was the first one. In the first half of the year it was a bit of a roller-coaster, mainly because my two partners in this had different ideas and expectations. But it all came to a (happy) end, and now I’m again on top of this project, with a new team.

17. Got On Board Of WeGetThere

It’s a very interesting project, aiming at bringing crowdfunding for travelers. I don’t have any operational role in it, and this is perhaps why I’m feeling a bit estranged, because I only know to take on a business on the operational side. But I’m slowly learning to be just an advisor.

18. Hit A Glass Wall With My Head

Literally. In the middle of a busy street, in Bucharest. I’m pretty positive this was a first for me, and that’s why I felt the need to put it in this list. Not to mention that it gave me quite a bit of material for another blog post.

19. Launched iAdd Lite

iADD it’s my iPhone/iPad app for time and task management. It’s in fact a life management framework, but it’s easier for people to understand what it does if I just say it’s “time and task management”. iADD Lite is the free version of this, with a limitation of 5 items per realm.

20. Flew With A Helicopter For The First Time

It was during the visit to New Zealand, in Rotorua, which, by the way, it’s a very nice place to visit. The experience was amazing, having just a less than a centimeter thick glass between you and the 500 meters below-of-you earth, well, that’s something I would do over, and over and over.

21. Almost Did Sky-diving

In other words, I did the closest thing to it, namely “floating” on very powerful air pump. In Rotorua, still. Also, an amazing experience. I think I’ll do this every day, if I could.

22. Ate A Hangi Dinner

That’s a traditional Maori dinner, cooked under the ground. One of the tastiest meals I ever had. Shifting from cannibalism to animal meat may have forced Maori to get creative with their meals. Joke aside, if you’re in New Zealand, you gotta try this.

23. Rode An Amphibian Boat

It was a “duck”, or one of the boats used by allies in the “D day” in Europe. It was the real thing and we had a tour over the lakes around Rotorua, as well as riding the normal roads in between, as a regular car. The driver was one of the funniest man I met.

24. Ate Grapes From My Own Garden

In line with the raspberries thing, eating grapes from my own garden was also an important highlight of this year. Especially since I didn’t take as much care as I wanted about that backyard vineyward.

25. Went To A Sting Concert

With my son, and that made the whole experience so much better. I’m not much of a concert goer, so that concert, along with the next ones, were very powerful experience for me. Not to mention Sting was exceptional.

26. Went To A Bon Jovi Concert

Again, pretty much because Victor, my son, wanted to go. It was also the first time they were in Romania, and they did their best to do a good job. And they succeeded, a great experience.

27. Went To The Sea With My Son

For the first time that is, for his 14th anniversary. We had a blast and, provided that all the conditions to go again will be in place, I look forward to do this again.

28. Hired People Again

It was part of my consultancy gig, but nevertheless, a strong experience, one that I didn’t have for the previous two years. I still have the skills and intuitions when it comes to assembling people together in teams. I must use this again.

29. Witnessed My First New Zealand Quake

It was a small one, just two days before the real earthquake that shook New Zealand, and Christchurch, specifically, so hard. What’s interesting, though, is that our initial travel schedule was altered, we were supposed to be in Christchurch exactly during the quake. I guess sometimes we just get lucky.

30. Held My First 5 Stars Hotel Teambuilding

Actually, it was a combination of “5 stars” in this: the client, a department of one of the biggest banks in Romania, as well as the hotel in which we were staying, an actual 5 stars facility. Although I traveled the world back and forth, I’m sure I never stayed in 5 stars hotel before.

31. Threw Away My High-School Notebooks

As part of leaving my former house, I decided to get rid of some of my inner baggage. I was very fond of what I wrote there and I carried those notebooks with me for the last 20 years. But letting them go was the right thing to do. You can’t grow if you don’t make room for growth.

32. Took My First Tango  Lesson

I didn’t continue or anything, but the mere fact that I was on a dance floor with a partner trying to learn how to tango was a big thing. It’s not on the top 5 priorities for me at the moment, but definitely something I want to pursue in the future.

33. Gave A Presentation About Astrology

It was part of an event called “Ignite” where people talk about their not so popular passions. “Coming true” about my interest in astrology was a big challenge. After the presentation, though, I was literally overwhelmed with requests for astrology readings. I still do some free readings from time to time since then.

34. Held A Workshop On How To Be A Digital Nomad

With a surprisingly numerous audience. I was surprised how little people knew about this lifestyle. Also, this reminded me of how thick the walls we are rising around us are. It’s so difficult to be open about new perspectives.

35. Stepped Away From Facebook

That was a very big decision. As part of my intention to step away from virtual existence in favor of a more grounded life, I decided to step down my game into social media. I had to reopen my account because I’m signed up with Facebook on too many sites, but I’m not active anymore. Maybe I’ll get over it, but right now it seems shallow, empty and ridiculous, compared with the options I have to spend my time in real life.

36. Stepped Out And Got Back On Board Of Venture Connect

Venture Connect is an event aiming at connecting entrepreneurs with investors. Early in spring I decided I don’t have the time nor the resources to deliver, so I stepped out. But, after a discussion with the founder of this event, I decided to get back in, on a more lighter and flexible position. It was

37. Started To Eat Paleo

It’s just a fancy name for eating normal food, without the bells and whistles of raw veganism or vegetarianism. With all due respect, being a raw food or a vegetarian became much more of a social statement (and a cool, cult-like thing) than a commitment to eat healthier. Following Tim Ferris’ The 4 Hour Body, I learned that one can live a perfectly healthy life by allowing meat to be part of their diet.

38. Launched The Forums On DragosRoua.com

It wasn’t very crowded on those forums, and it still isn’t, but I didn’t expect it to be, anyway. I just wanted to give my readers the opportunity to have a board where they can write other stuff than just commenting. I don’t even care if it will take off, it just looks good as it is.

39. Had Fun

It may look like a strange thing to put on such a list, but believe me, it was something that was very rare to me, at least during the year before this one. Too much stuff to manage, to keep from falling down, to take care of. Well, since I actually let it crash and burn, I rediscovered how simple it is to have fun again.

40. Stepped Down Blogging

This was the third year of blogging on this domain, and it was by far the smallest in terms of number of posts. But the traffic grew constantly. As I already said it in some of the latest posts, I will continue to write here, but unbiased by what “I should” do in terms of frequency and topics.

41. Accepted Change

It wasn’t a specific moment for this, but rather a series of incremental “a-ha” moments. During my 41st year I understood not only that my life as I knew it was over, but that a new one, richer beyond imagination, is unfolding. All I had to do was to accept it. And from the moment I moved out, a month ago, things are evolving at the speed of light.

A Winter Tale

Last Saturday I was to a party. Yes, I do this from time to time. It was a rather informal meeting in a Bucharest club, 10 people at most. I only knew the organizer, a close friend of mine and partner in my blogging workshop.

I don’t know if it was the music, the quality of the people or the fact that I didn’t attend to a party for some time now, fact is it was amazing. I had a lot of quality fun and enjoyed good music, dancing and exquisite company. Little I know at that time that this rather beautiful experience had to set course for one of the most pressuring experiences in my life.

Around 4 AM we decided it’s time to go. Since I was one of the few people who came by car, I got the honor of driving a few people home. Once out of the club, one of the most snowy nights in my life took over. I could barely recognize my car, although I didn’t spend more than 6-7 hours in the club.

I drove 3 people home, which made for one and half hour of driving through snow. I live outside Bucharest, in a rather isolated compound. Around 5:15 AM I got home and after getting over the isolated road which connects us to the world, I finally entered the compound. Only two turns and I’m home. With my mind already at a hot cup of tea, I took the turn to the left and puff… car stopped.

Let me tell you something about my self: my car doesn’t stop in the snow. Never. And I mean it. Puzzled and almost ashamed, I tried for at least 30 minutes to use some balance, accelerations and other techniques, to no success. My car was stuck in the snow. And the blizzard got more and more powerful. I walked to my house (50 meters away) and took a shovel. Another 30 minutes of work, using the shovel. No success.

Almost desperate, I got home and took some blankets left outside on the bench. Put them under the wheels and voila: I was finally moving again. Took me one hour of work at 50 meters from my picket fence, but I finally got home. Huh.

The Second Act

Around noon, I decided it’s time to go for some shopping. Weather news were rather worrying and the next day I have to fly to Rome. So getting some supplies for my family to make sure they’ll be fine while I was away seemed like a good idea. Back in the car and rushing to the store.

Alas, I was rushing only for 45 meters because 10 meters to the infamous place of my first forced stop, here I am, stuck again. This time, I got a huge quantity of snow under the car and the wheels didn’t actually touched the ground. Funny. And irritating.

After 45 minutes of shoveling and swearing a neighbor came. Probably frustrated by the noise of my car engine. He bring in a fence made by dry reed. After a few trials and errors we pulled the car out. All this time blizzard was getting stronger and stronger.

I parked the car, entered the house and started to watch the TV weather report closely. Apparently, it was an orange code for blizzard and snow. Which means it was pretty nasty. Orange code is bad. Worse than orange code is only red code and when you have red code is super bad.

After a few hours my ears were pleasantly surprised by the incredible sound of a really big engine, entering our street. A snow plough! Yes! It was about time.

The Third Act

With only 1 hour till dark I decided to give it a try. Again. After all, my plane was leaving tomorrow (early) morning and I still had to do that shopping. Snow plough seemed to cleaned up the streets of the compound but when I got out, I started to feel a little bit chilly. Obviously, the snow plough was there too, only outside the compound it was… well, open field. The blizzard was going on pretty strong so I could barely recognize the road.

Took me only 200 meters outside the compound to get stuck again. Third time. Open field. Nothing to see around, other than the compound, blurrier as the weather got worse and the dark was rapidly going down. I took my good friend, the shovel, and started to strengthen our relationship.

To no success, of course. After 45 minutes of shoveling I decided to abandon the car in the middle of the road. Or what I thought it was the middle of the road. Snow was around 80 cm deep. Back home, all televisions were broadcasting catastrophic news about the snow and how the entire South of the country was blocked.

And my plane? Am I going to catch my plane? I stayed awake until 12:30 AM when I decided I won’t. Even if I would make it by foot (that would be a mile on open field at 4:30 AM, blizzard and 1 meter snow) what about my car? It was right in the middle of the road and in the morning there will be another snow plough coming to clean the compound streets.

So, I took a nap and slowly allowed my feelings of depression to take over. When I woke up I was pretty pumped with frustration. I hate being stuck.

The Fourth Act

Well, around 11 AM a neighbor come to my door telling me to get the car out of the road, making some room for the snow plough. Happiness and joy. Only for a few minutes, until I got outside. It was surrealistic. Snow was around 1.5 meters around my house and blizzard was going on as strong as yesterday.

Briefly watched the sky, same way you watch a bottle of wine trying to figure out if there’s still something left. Only this time I didn’t want to be any snow left in the sky. But nope, the snow was strong and so was the blizzard. When I got to the car I saw the snow plough made a detour, leaving my car untouched. I talked with the driver and he told me he had to clean the compund first and he’ll see if he can help me after that. Should I wait for him in the car? Of course, I’ll be back in 15 minutes, driver said.

After 1 hour of trying to get warm in my car, the plough finally came out of the neighborhood. My time was finally came! I asked him to pull me to the main road, about 1 mile. He agreed and after another few failed attempts, I finally attached my car to his back and we’re rolling.

Main road was clean and I finally got to do that shopping. 24 hours delay, but did it. My family was about to be happy. On the way back, everything went fine, until I got to a place where the road couldn’t be seen. And it was a very good reason for that: it was completely covered in snow. Not more than 10-15 meters, but seemed like the wind had a preference for that specific part, because it stacked like 1 meter of snow exactly there.

Despite my intention to go through it full speed, accelerating like in a bob race, I only managed to put my car even deeper than I wanted in the snow. 4th time. Open field again. Blizzard as always. With a few neighbors at the other end of the road, waiting for me to get out. Only I couldn’t even open the door. Car was like in a snow container, 5 centimeters to the white walls each side.

If there are ethereal beings surrounding us every moment, called angels, well, my angels surely got enough material to fill up a full dictionary of 4 letters words. I swear. I really do. I can get really, really creative. If I’m on the “right” setup – stuck in the middle of nowhere, for instance, with no perspective to get out soon – I can do it for 30 minutes in a row, without repeating! And I mean it.

At some point I was so frustrated that I was almost waiting for the windshield to crack up. I could physically feel the pressure from the inside. And the pressure from the inside was infinitesimally small compared with the pressure from the outside. Seemed like I just couldn’t make anything to find my way home in that storm.

Suddenly, I remembered I got the phone from the guy with the snow plough. I called him and begged him to come back. Promised an obscene bribe which finally made him change his mind and promise he will come pick me up in about… 2 hours! 2 hours!!! Meanwhile, neighbors at the other end of the road took their shovels and came to help me. Of course, nothing happened.

Minutes later, I noticed something interesting on the field. A few hundreds meters away there was a gipsy shelter. I saw two gipsies running towards me and in seconds I saw them pushing my car. After a few minutes in which they worked with my neighbors, they disappeared.

In less than 10 minutes they were back again, carrying… a horse! Yeap, brilliant idea. We attached the car to the horse and, in a few minutes, I was witnessing one of the most incredible images in my entire life: my 4×4 car was pulled in the snow by a white horse, with a running gipsy near it. For a few seconds, I was living in another world. Don’t you ever dare to ask me why I didn’t pull out my iPhone to take a picture of it. Because it did crossed my mind but at the time I was ready to do it, we were already there.

What I Learned From It

Nothing. Seriously. Sometimes I think we just have to leave away all that personal development shmancy-fancy mumbo-jumbo and just live. Just experience things. I felt powerless and defeated. Missed my plane to Rome – and a potential business involving one of my favorite personal development gurus, Tony Robbins – and got stuck in snow four times. Frustration was a feeble euphemism for what I felt.

But the next day – meaning today – everything was changed. Weather was incredible. Sunny. Clear. Blizzard stopped. Looked like my 4 snow accidents were just nightmares, nothing real.

Took my friend, the shovel, and got out. Without planning it, I started to shovel the snow away form the road in front of my house. Spent around 2 hours. I moved around a ton of snow (300+ shovels at 3-4 kg average shovel).

It was my belated revenge. See, I can do stuff! You can’t make me feel powerless for ever. I can move 1 ton of snow, if I want. I’m still here. Didn’t learned anything from your stupid lesson but I’m still here.

Felt really good.

The Trip To Switzerland – First Impressions

As I already mentioned, we planned for a longer holiday in Switzerland for this year. This trip involves also a Christmas holiday in the Alpes, near Gstaad, and some other activities, most of them related to my personal life. One of the most important is getting in touch again with my sister, who’s living here for more than 8 years now.

We got here by plane, on 20th December, flying Swiss. We’re in the full formula, meaning my wife and my daughter. We enjoyed a good and silent flight, shorter than the average period you need to cross Bucharest from one side to the other. That’s around 2 hours, by the way. We landed in Geneva and checked in to a hotel. Haven’t had any difficulties on the logistic side. We didn’t had any schedule made in advance, we adjusted things on the fly. Each afternoon or evening we are at my sister’s place, enjoying family life, and the mornings are set for some spontaneous activities.

Yesterday, for instance, we tried to do some shopping at IKEA. What should be a regular ride to a store in my country proved to be completely different in Switzerland. IKEA Switzerland is outside the city, at around 40 minutes by train, in a small city called Allaman. Getting there was funnier than we thought, we had to switch buses and trains only to got there. But it was fun.

Life Cost In Switzerland

The thing that surprised me the most was the unbelievable high price of the life in this city. I knew that Geneva was one of the most expensive cities in the world. I had a previous trip here in 2005 to the Auto Show which is held at Palexpo, so I already had some insight. But seeing this again in the light of a regular tourist, the city is simply unaffordable. Especially the transportation and the food costs are too high… I know this is one of the most important cities in the world, and setting a price barrier is one way of keeping it safer, but things are simply not justifiable. Whatever.

On the other side of the high price I must reckon that the quality of the products and services delivered is over the average. Way over the average, so I have to admit that there is some justification for the high prices, after all. Especially the food is looking and tasting much better than in other cities and the public transportation is on time and clean. Extremely clean. Taxis are unaffordable, we paid 10 EUROS for a 3 minutes fare. Clothing is ok as long as you don’t shop from the fanciest boutiques downtown. (more…)

7 Things About Me

Well, it seems is that time of the year. And I don’t mean Christmas, but tagging and meme games. This time is Stephen Smith from Productivity In Context, and it’s about 7 things about me. Tracking down the beginning of this meme was a little over my time but I can tell for sure that the previous link before Stephen was Phil Gerbyshak from Slacker Manager…. I don’t usually follow these games, mostly because almost all those memes are just small disguised traffic scams with little or no associated value. But this time seems it’s going to be something fun and genuine. I’m in.

Let’s see the rules of this first:

• Link to the original tagger(s), and list these rules on my blog.
• Share 7 facts about myself in the post – some random, some weird.
• Tag 7 people at the end of my post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

7 Things About Me

1. I am 38 years old, as of November 10th this year.
2. I work for myself for about 10 years now, being what they call an webtrepreneur. This year I’ve made my first successful exit from my web publishing company in Romania.
3. In the last 4 months I’ve been eating only raw food with dramatic positive impact on both my physical health and mental clarity.
4. While doing my military service, 19 years ago, in a city called Timisoara, I was a live witness of the Romanian Revolution, which ultimately led to the first free elections on my country after half of a century. During that exact period I didn’t sleep for 5 nights and 6 days in a row, which is supposed to have devastating effects on the brain. I somehow survived. Or so I think…
5. I’m married with Diana and we have wonderful daughter, Bianca, who is almost 3 years old. I learned a lot from Bianca, in the first and second year of her life.
6. I’m a DIY junkie, I’ve assembled almost all the furniture in our house, and organized our garden literally from the ground up.
7. During high school I’ve played basket-ball as a left wing, although I’m right-handed. Apparently, this was some sort of advantage…

Now I have to pass this on to the following bloggers:

• Steven Aitchison, follow him on Twitter
• Kris Rowlands, follow her on Twitter
• Chris Marsden, follow him on Twitter
• Andrew Mason, follow him on twitter
• Brett Kelly, follow him on twitter
• Patrick Rhone, follow him on twitter
• Pascal Venier, follow him on twitter

Those blogs are quite interesting, by the way, steal a second or two and have a great read on them!

Personal Milestones

Do you have personal milestones? I do. By personal milestones I understand those times when you sit down and replace the “doing” in your life with the “seeing”. You stop doing whatever you planned to do and start to stare at your life. Right, just stare at whatever it comes to your focus and try to understand why and how you’ve accomplished that.

Today is one of those milestones for me. It turns out that today is my birthday. I’m a Scorpio, yes, and my rising sign is Capricorn. Oh, and my Moon is in Aries, in the 3rd house, if you’re interested. Unless you know my date of birth, the time and exact place, you wouldn’t know that. Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to share with you some of the things I see right now when I’m staring at my life.

First of all, my career has dramatically changed from my last birthday. At that time I was still an online entrepreneur, with a moderate success in his field, struggling to find resources to keep the things running. That was one of the activities I thought I enjoyed the most, but time said otherwise. I don’t miss at all being a regular business man. To be honest, I don’t think I ever liked to be perceived like this. I always thought that the label of “entrepreneur”, or “successful businessman” is a shallow and empty form. I accepted it and carried around with me only to be accepted in turn by society. It’s still pretty difficult to walk into a potential client office and say: “Hi, I’m a citizen of the world, and I think I might have something that could interest you. Let’s do business together!”. I guess will have to wait a little bit for that one to manifest…

If you look from outside it might seem I don’t have a career at all. I don’t have a regular job. All I do is experience life as it is, blog about it and follow some simple principles for living. That would be my “mission statement”, by the way, and if you don’t have one yet, I highly encourage you to make one for you. It’s so much simpler when you have a personal mission statement, than when you don’t. The moment you start to sketch a personal mission, you may find some very interesting patterns in your life, not always under your control. You may found that what you do on a daily basis has nothing to do with your core principles, or, to lighten up the things a little, with what you simply enjoy to do in your life. But, as I plan to write a full post about finding your personal mission, I’ll stop my ramblings about it.

My health is another thing that really skyrocketed during the last year. After I sold my business, I started to really take care of myself. I become an early riser and embraced a full raw food diet. I can proudly say that for the last quarter of the year I’ve been in my best shape in the last 10-15 years. Especially the raw food diet has been a tremendous step ahead. Another very interesting thing that I see – now that I started to really stare at my life – is the fact that I’ve been doing all of this progress with so much little effort. Becoming an early riser especially would have been a major burden for me in other circumstances. But I somehow managed to get over with it and enjoy it. I’m planning to write how to become an early riser later on, so enough for today.

Financially speaking, my current status is a complete rewrite of my last birthday financial status. I turned more than 100.000 EUR debt (that would be a consolidated debt for both personal and business debt) into zero, and my finances are having now a consistent growing path. There’s no explosion coming in and I don’t really think my finances will jump to the sky like tomorrow, but I’m out of debt and I’m making as much money as I need. Of course, this was possible because I sold the business. And now it’s the moment to say that I never felt like I’ve sold anything. I always felt like I was buying my liberty in exchange for my business. That was quite a deal, my friend, believe me .

Personal relationships are much more fulfilling than on my last birthday. I don’t have as many “friends” as I used to, and I find this a relief. I can hardly count my friends on one hand fingers, and I find this extremely fulfilling. Never was I the going out guy type and I prefer much simpler friendships. And my family is just starting to function. I can’t say I had a family while I was focusing on the business, although I did most of the things you are supposed to do when you have a family: like social entertainment and so on. It’s only in the last few months that my family relationships are starting to unfreeze and rearrange. It does come with some floods if you are curious and the unfreezing process is not always pleasant. There are ups and downs but I am so thankful for the fact that I do have a family relationship that I can control and take responsibility for, even if we’re fighting at times. But fighting is healthy. If you keep it inside it will start to rotten.

Another fantastic thing that happened this year was my trip to New Zealand. I would hardly have understood what you were saying if you had come to me one year ago and tell me that I will travel to the other end of the Earth and back. I’m pretty sure that I would seriously consider your mental health if we had had that type of conversation one year ago. Oh, and the fact that I decided to move with my entire family there, that would have been unconceivable. But it happened. It really happened. The trip was fantastic, and the move to New Zealand is started. It might happen at a different speed than I thought, but it’s happening, it started to unfold and there is nothing I can do to stop it.

Overall, this personal milestone is much nicer to have and describe than my last 10-12 personal milestones. And all of this happened because I wanted to. In fact, everything in our lives happens because we wanted it to happen. There are no excuses, no coincidences, no other persons to be blamed for your life. You are what you want to be, every second of your life. And if you don’t like who you are right now, if you hate your life as it is in this second, if you feel you live under your real potential, remember it takes only a shift in what you want to change your life for good. That’s all you have to do. Is that simple, you only have to want the change. The changing process can be painful and you might overcome a lot of resistance, but eventually you will change your life. And it really starts with wanting something better for yourself.

Happy birthday, Diana!

Today is my wife’s birthday. We’re both Scorpio so our birthdays are really close. I write this without really planning – one of the things Diana taught me being to enjoy life without too much planning. But that’s not the only thing that she taught me. There are plenty of other things she taught me and for which I am grateful. I am grateful to Diana because

• she takes me for who I am
• she gave me the beautiful gift in the world: our daughter
• she is beautiful
• she is sometimes moody
• she understands when I’m sometimes moody
• she has green eyes
• she is the most playful person I ever met
• she thinks in unusual ways, although so similar to my ways
• she is somebody I can trust
• she is telling the truth
• she makes me telling the truth
• she smiles more than any other person I know
• she knows how to make – and keep – new friends
• she know how to accept my failures and acknowledge my successes
• she taught me traveling is the most interesting way to enjoy life
• she never worries, except when she does
• she is a free person
• she made me a free person
• she have unusual subtle intuitions
• she made me trust my intuition
• she made thousands of little beautiful things that I don’t remember now – the same way you don’t really remember putting together every brick of your new home, but you’re always surrounded by those bricks, which of course, are your new home now

For all those little beautiful things I am grateful to Diana. But I don’t love her because of that. I just love her.

Journaling versus Blogging

Back in 2004 I started to keep a journal. It was basically a folder on my Linux powered laptop, with a bunch of unorganized files floating around. Everything was written hastily using vi, an editor which may be considered somehow cumbersome by the average computer user. Those were the days when my programming skills were sharper than ever… 4 years later I look at blogging from a serious business perspective, and made from eDragonu.ro blog my main activity. It was quite a process. Not always simple or even visible, sometimes pushed in the background by other, more urgent activities, but it was constant and evolving. It was like a subtle awakening. In this post I will try to outline some of my experiences from an emotional journalizing attitude to a much more fulfilling approach like blogging.

Getting emotional

Keeping a journal is a fantastic therapeutic activity. It literally keeps depression away (but don’t talk about that to your therapist, or you can notice a sudden increase in his bill). Most of the people think about journaling as a very normal and maybe even necessary activity, but only until you finish college. You are allowed to keep a journal until your graduation, but if you do this afterwards, well, you might be labelled as a strange person. Journaling is often seen as a weakness or a sign of an unstable personality.

But in fact, it is quite the contrary. The vast majority of famous people had a journal. Almost any important personality, from physicists like Albert Einstein to writers like Marcel Proust, they all kept a diary. And that seemed to enforce their inner balance and to boost their creativity resources. Having a journal is a sign of honesty and courage. You know, meeting with yourself is not always comfortable, and your journal is a continuous meeting with yourself.

I started journaling mainly because of my emotional overflow. I needed a safety valve, other than escapism, denial or alcohol. I used those safety valves before, until I actually rend them useless. They were not safety valves anymore, but addictions or psychological delusions. So I started to write whatever I felt when I was in a frustrating mood. I just wanted to know who I am and why some things are happening to me over and over again. I wanted to identify everything that made me angry, or sad, or even happy and joyful. It was an action triggered by a very high emotional state. It was an attempt to regain the balance between within and without. It was an act of relief and recharge.

After several days in which I wrote all of the pressuring stuff, I started to feel a difference. I was somehow relaxed. I felt like I processed it in some way, it was not on the inside anymore. I managed to get it out, put it in a safer place, and gain some relief over it. The emotional overflow finally found a way to flow. It felt good. But as the number of files started to grow on my folder, I began to actually read them, not only write them. It was the second important step I took. I started to actually understand.

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Dragos Roua’s Next Steps

It’s time to make some announcements here regarding the future of Dragos Roua’s blog, and also the author’s – Dragos Roua, by his name – medium term intentions. First and foremost, I have to tell you that I’ve finished the exit from the company I founded 10 years ago, Mirabilis Media. The company was one of the players in the web publishing industry in Romania, owning several niche portals (automotive and gastronomy, mainly). I was the founder and the only shareholder, and I started the negotiations for the sale more than a year ago. The exit was a real success, both in terms of financial compensation and transaction structure (basically, I negotiated my own exit terms with the buyer). I feel relieved.

To be honest, in the last year, the company felt more like a burden than a fulfillment for me. Although I was disciplined enough to make it work better and better – thanks to all the productivity posts here – I didn’t felt any specific joy or exhilaration by working there. Don’t get me wrong, the company was one of the best in its field, and I had to chose from 7 potential investors, with whom I had negotiations for more than 14 months. It was a real asset, and the conversion into money of this asset was a real concern to me.  But the everyday feeling was not as strong as it was in the beginning.

So, it had to be sold. It had to become something else for me, in order to free me and let me continue my chosen path. In DragosRoua’s terminology, this company sale situation was one of the crossroads I hunted, in order to become more me, to come closer to a much vivid life experience. I spent 10 years of my life in this business, and it was the moment to acknowledge that all the goals I’ve set in the past were reached. Is so easy to get stuck with your own patterns. Especially when those patterns are creating a comfort zone around you. Getting out of the comfort zone is what really scares you. And perhaps that fear prevented me to do this business exit even earlier.

Whatever was in the past, is done now, anyway.

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