This is my Virtual Assistant writing

"The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul."
G. K. Chesterton

Short of making New Year's resolutions, which are in my opinion a failed idea, since very rarely do people follow up the resolutions with action items, I've decided to take a bit more proactive approach to lifestyle design this year. This past semester was incredibly stressful for various reasons: I created a host of distractions that kept me from having 2 or 3 key conversations which could have eliminated about half of my worries for an entire five months; I let myself get caught up in a dying relationship; I wrecked myself physically, and as a result was unable to run causing my caloric intake to catch up to me. And on top of that, I was still in school and finding ways to put off my lab reports until they we only a week away from the due date. That won't do at all for a new decade, will it? I wouldn't say never again, because I am human, and I may find myself from time to time caught in situations where I begin to worry, but I plan to design this coming year, and indeed my life to come, a bit differently, and hopefully find the way to keep me excited with life for the rest of my life.

About a month ago, I began what I am calling the Great Experiment, the penultimate collection of data for my life. It is a simple red binder, which is becoming more and more full as the days go on, that contains my observations, experiments, conclusions, and tips on life broken down into four general categories; physical, mental, spiritual, and general (I realize that each of these distinctions is really arbitrary; everything should go in general, but for my own benefit, I broke it down a bit). Papers full of interesting stuff have ended up in this binder, and experiments that I ran on myself in the past were written up and included. There's stuff in there from what excessive soy protein consumption (about 1.5 lbs per day) did to me in what I identify as the worst 5 months of my life, to my thoughts on methods of sexual actualization. Everything is covered and, for my own eyes, nothing is too shameful. As I progress through this year, my plan is to reveal the ongoing development of the Master Manual of Garik Cruise Sadovy and hopefully anyone willing to hang on with me will benefit from my self destruction and pleasure. I credit the discovery of Tim Ferriss (Author of The Four Hour Work Week http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/) and his own self experimentation with the inspiration I mustered to enact this. I find his work blindingly intriguing and similar to what I plan to do, but the two of us are fundamentally different, and thus what lies in store for me is not a simple duplication of his ideas, but my perspective on lifestyle development. It is my hope to invest myself as thoroughly he has in improving the quality of life.

That said, here are a few of my intentions for the next twelve months:

1) Triathletics and Ultramarathon: A friend of mine convinced me last semester to do a half ironman, and right now, I'm not pissing myself. I have been able to do the running and swimming components for a while now, though I have never done them back to back, but the real critical link in the clustercuss is road cycling; I've been on a road bike for a total of ten minutes. In my entire life. But no matter, as my friend has finally lent me a road bike and the collegiate road season is fast approaching. Trial by fire, and according to the twenty e-mails I get every day from the other members of the road team, both my ass and my soul are in for an experience that will challenge the very concept of what it means to die. In addition to the preparation for the tri, I have recently been dazzled by another form of what others have deemed questionable suicide: the ultramarathon. After reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, my perceptions of how humans should behave relative to exercise, running in particular, has been completely changed. And my running distances have been changed to reflect that. Over the next semester, I will be attempting to run everywhere, from classes to grocery shopping, and all in fashion, with Raramuri Hurache running sandals, with a smile on my face and excitement in my heart. That's right; I'm making running fun, and you're all invited to join in. If you live within running distance of NC State's campus, I'm always looking for people to run with, or else you can just feel lazy as a grinning blur sails by on your left.

2)Diet: Those of you who know me are aware of my extensive experimentation with diet, but over the next year, I plan to take it to a whole new level. I dropped my college meal plan, and after my parents stopped shouting about how I'm going to waste away, I began to think of how I am going to approach diet this year. I've been working with a few concepts of late: veganism, fish diets, the 10% caloric protein factor, vegetarianism, amino acid balance, energizing foods, naturally occuring superfoods, and eating like a poor person. I want to continue implementing these concepts, and I just don't have control with the dining hall. Plus it was burning a hole in my pocket and promoting the habit of overeating that led to a 10lb weight gain in a single week after I injured my hip. So I had a 25lb sack of pinto beans sent to my dorm along with some bulk chia seed. I'm planning to be at the farmer's market oft, most likely running, to get my fresh veg in. And I will probably be doing some experimental cooking to keep the food interesting. Maybe I'll write a book called "The Healthy Homeless Diet." Actually, there would be excellent demand for that. Wow; sometimes I just come up with some good ideas. Go Garik.

3) Virtual Assistants (VA): This was brought on directly by Tim Ferriss who gave me a host of case studies from which to garner inspiration to place my own personal call to Your Man In India, a company that provides personal assistants for anyone, capable of accomplishing almost anything with a simple e-mail. It was only today that I started to consider how a personal assistant would be helpful and how economical it would be, given that I am a college student and not necessarily a typical 9 to 5 employee or self styled entrepreneur (though I also plan to change this, as you will read). But this is the beauty of the Great Experiment. Tim has a host of information about businessmen using assistants, but I will be a college student experimenting with using a VA, and thus will have a host of unique experiences. It will be interesting, as my current position in my lab is an hourly paid job, but my hope is that I will be much more effective by delegating all of the menial research I have to do, allowing me to streamline the development of my ideas and not having to spend hours sifting through articles on PubMed. I'll set myself the arbitrary deadline of acquiring a VA by February. This also brings me to a new outlook on my job...

4) Expectations from my lab work: If you've been reading my post from over the summer, you know that I have been chasing the golden dream of an undergraduate hoping to apply for national STEM grants: Scholarly Publication. And you may also have noted that no matter how close it has seemed, I always seem to miss it. I'll not sit for that (as a matter of fact, I'm not sitting much any more after reading the little case study at the end of Steven Levitt's Freakonomics). It is thus my goal, in the spirit of elimination, delegation, and allocation of my time to only the most important tasks, to define only goals which are on track to get some kind of publishable material out of my research. It dawned on me that Papers are more important to me than money, and why in hell should I be doing anything in the spirit of an hourly job, even if that is how I'm being paid?

5) Invention: I'm an inventor; Myers Briggs said so. And it holds true, as I come up with a lot of crazy stuff that, after a bit of refining, could represent marketable ideas. I've got a couple of ideas in the air right now, and over the next year, one of my studies will be the methods of successful inventors and what kind of options are out there for marketing your ideas. I really don't know the first thing about copyrighting or the patent process, or even how much you actually have to invent before you can own and market an idea. Thus I shall study, mainly through asking people who have done it, which brings me to...

6) Important and Unreachable people: Last year, I wanted to do this kind of personal dining series where I would have meals with people that would be of benefit to talk to. I did it a few times, but it was haphazard at most. This next year, I'm putting the test on my comfort with approaching people who could buy and sell me by not only reimplementing the dine with Garik series, but also my weekly challenge of contacting someone generally considered unreachable, such as a famous athlete, a political star, a prolific researcher, Hollywood celebrity, or revolutionary artist. And this is not necessarily with the idea that I would like these people personally, but more to build up a standard in which nothing is unreachable, not even the self made elite. And also to have a ridiculous network. I mean, wouldn't it be cool to tell people that you were on first name basis with the Presydent of Poland? Or had just offered your opinion on healthcare to Lil' Wayne?

7) Travel Writing: Once again, I'm making it my plan to find myself in potentially dangerous, sometimes explosive, and always enthralling situations in another country for a time this summer, and I'm actually going to write about it. One of the five things on my "to be" list for the next twelve months is to become a published travel author, and there's a lot to that; the wirting and traveling itself, marketing, public opinion, venues, publishers, and so on. I'll have to have my VAs do some research on college students that were able to capture the attention of large publications or publishing houses and have them become part of my contact list. People have just told me too many times that I tell some boss stories to let this go any longer.

8) Web Based Business: Once again in the spirit of Tim Ferriss's challenges, I am going to attempt to design a source of automated income to fuel my pension for excitement (Wing-suits and powerbocks cost a pretty penny, I can tell you that). I have been pestered to sell my "Whales Spy For Sweden" shirts online for a while now, and I am finally getting to that. I figure I'll purchase a web platform where I can get those shirts moving, play around with options on design, and start to understand how web businesses are really run and how they can be completely automated. I expect to do a lot of reading on the subject in my spare time. Or perhaps I'll just outsource the reading the reading and get a VA to give me the shortcuts. There you go, my boy!

And many more... but right now, I have overstepped my curfew, so you will have to be content with this glimpse into the next year of the Great experiment. I will continue to make blog postings on this site as I do things, and the prospect of failing my 8 readers will keep me committed to pursuit of the ultimate goal; Alexander's "Glorious Life". Eventually, I hope to set up my own website where, much like Ferriss, I can play around with more options than blogspot allows, but I shall make you aware when that is on the way. Expect my future posts to be more like my previous ones too; informative, witty, pandering... and generally guilty pleasures. I'm still waiting to hear suggestions for the Nat Geo Young Explorer's Grant that Brian Parham and I are undertaking; I had the cool idea of finding an African tribe that still practices the persistence hunt and running with them to kill kudu's with our bare hands and feet. These suggestions are welcome at garik@barefooted.com.

Cheers mates!