Seven Travelojos Blogolutions for 2010

Practically every year going back to high school I’ve resolved to do something that involves waking up at five in the morning. I would devote this golden hour to whatever I was feeling passionate about at that phase of my life.

These passions have ranged from practicing basketball, to running, or learning Spanish. Last year, I resolved to write blog posts at 5 am.

Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to stick to this  or even start doing it most years. One year, I managed to string together a few weeks of running at 5am. But I stopped after driving home from work one afternoon in a semi-conscious state.

Crafting Reasonable Resolutions. It’s probably because of these repeated failures that I usually don’t get serious about crafting resolutions until I’m far enough into the new year to think of something reasonable.

So without further delay, here’s are a few things I’d like to accomplish with Travelojos in 2010:

1. Publish a free Seth-Godin style e-book written by Latin America oriented bloggers or authors. The idea is to find 50 or so writers to each provide a 300-500 word message to be included in the book. Each message will take up one page of the e-book and will include the writer’s basic information. One of the main challenges with this project will be finding someone to help out with the graphics. But there are probably a few other obstacles I’m likely to encounter that I haven’t even thought of yet.
2. Find a logo for Travelojos. I would place the logo on the blog and use it for things such as the Travelojos Twitter account.
3. Take a trip to Latin America. This one is actually more challenging than it sounds because of my family situation. My wife and kids had a great time with me in Mexico last summer. But, there’s plenty of places outside of Latin America they’d like to see–like the Grand Canyon for example. It looks like I’ll be going solo on for my next adventure in Latin America–something I’ve never done before.
4. Start a Facebook Fan Page. This seems like a good way to offer a club house for Travelojos readers where they can do things like swap photos etc.
5. Incorporate learning Spanish into the blog. This might take the form of including a Spanish idiom with every post. Or, writing one paragraph in Spanish. I need to brainstorm about this one.
6. Attend the Travel Blog Exchange in New York City on June 26-27. I’ve found meeting other bloggers in person to be a worthwhile source of inspiration and practical ideas. Plus, the registration fee is only $80–an extremely low price compared to just about any other conference I’ve signed up for.
7. Find more guest bloggers and do more interviews. I’ve heard of a book called “No One Cares What You Had for Lunch.” Even though I’ve never read it, its title is one of my guiding principles. Travelojos is not about me, it’s about Latin America. There’s so many talented people out there who are laboring in obscurity that it seems silly not to celebrate their work on my blog.

Sharing these goals is a little bit scary because there’s a good chance I won’t accomplish some of them. But I figure that’s better than not trying to reach them in the first place–or at least that’s what director and artist Tim Burton would say.

Have any ideas for how I might go about accomplishing some of this goals? Care to lend a hand? Leave a comment or e-mail me at travelojos AT gmail.com.

Photo by Laffy4k (Via Creative Commons)