I had no heat, two plastic chairs and a coffee table. I was chasing down the last of that year’s freelancing invoices to make about $16,000.

I was certainly still privileged for an endless list of reasons, but, to put it shortly, for a lot of reasons, 2009 was a miserable year for me. The three of us all had disappointing years. We all agreed that 2010 was going to better. Much, much better.

What I did do last year was reflect on 2009 and decided upon a theme: slow start.

I haven’t paid it much mind until now, but I think that’s a great task, summing up a year and trying to move in the direction of another for the following year. In that post, I suggested 2010 would have to be a year of ‘next steps.’

Basically, I need a thousand flowers to bloom so I could see which one I wanted to pick.

As expected, 2010 was a much, much better year. It was a year of tremendous growth for me, and, yes, next steps, as I’ll reflect upon below.

But now, with all of this growth, it is time to pick. Fitting the professional goals and the personal resolutions I’ve set, my theme or my overarching goal for 2011 is focus.

I’ll be dropping responsibilities, goals and projects. It’s time to make a business sustainable and focus on doing things well, not just trying anything I can get my hands on.

In 2010, I did some speaking, and I developed a lot of thoughts on editorial innovation. I brought in some revenue, set up businesses and learned plenty about taxes. What I didn’t do was much deep journalism or strong feature writing. At NEast Philly, my coverage of some civic meetings included some genuine accountability reporting and my work at Technically Philly included good community coverage, but I mostly forfeited that role.

The only clip worth noting, in my opinion and from my memory, was a long-form profile for NEast on a neighborhood town watch in Northeast Philadelphia — and something I wrote on behalf of a nonprofit for which I was working, as noted below. I did write some posts here in 2010 that I thought were compelling.

Indeed, I was focused on many other things.

The biggest news of my 2010:

• January: Moved into my first home.
• February: Announced taking a new job handling editorial strategy with Back on My Feet.
• March: Launched a somewhat satirical 67th ward brand.
• April: Helped organize the second national BarCamp NewsInnovation
• May: Had a feature profile of mine anthologized and published.
• June: Launched Story Shuffle, a themed, first-person story telling event and then hosted others.
• July: Grew the Back on My Feet blog, which I launched and detailed some growth.
• August: Helped plan and then hosted Switch Philly, a sponsored, paid, tech-startup demo event with close to 200 people in attendance.
• September: Received a J-Lab enterprise reporting grant.
• October: Attended the Online News Association conference and learned that while there had been much growth, there was need for projects to start collaborating and coming together.
• November: Left Back on My Feet to come on full-time with Technically Media. (I also applied for a Knight Arts Challenge grant.)
• December: Launched a Knight application for a local Crunchbase to increase accountability and unite indie news sites editorially first, a sensible next step to our TP directory and membership plans.

In 2011, I’ll focus with Technically Media and the futures of Technically Philly and NEast Philly, particularly when considering the announced William Penn Foundation investment and my thoughts on that investment.

Yes, I’m doing a resolutions post. If for no other reason than to hold myself accountable.

Looking at last year’s professional goals, which were much more about staying afloat financially, I think this year, the theme is laying the foundation of sustainability to grow a business and opportunities at journalism and the like.

I broke them out more specifically by month, as I did for last year’s personal resolutions:

1. JANUARY: Work full-time for myself — It will be a great personal accomplishment to be a full-time employee at a business I’ve grown. While I’m currently drawing a salary, its as an independent contractor, I want to finalize the transition in 2011.
2. FEBRUARY: Post here at least weekly — I continue to find great value in my development as a writer and understanding the tools of the web by flushing out my opinions here and disseminating them.
3. MARCH: Organize contacts — I have fallen behind in the proper organization of contacts and sources, which I want to solidify. This also means cleaning up my other Google apps, like a calendar that has fallen apart.
4. APRIL: Complete big journalism project — It looks like I will be playing a big role in a nicely focused investigative piece for NEast Philly, which will launch this month. That will be a satisfying goal to be involved with, ideally, another bigger, meaningful piece of journalism.
5. MAY: Host major regional event — We at Technically Philly will be soon announcing plans we’re gathering for a major week-long event in the spring that I want to help make a major success.
6. JUNE: Lead major grant project – Another major investigative and research reporting project will be winding down around this time of year, which will be a major professional focus of mine in 2011.
7. JULY: Regularly volunteer – I want to return to a focus of serving others, and see opportunity in my professional capacity.
8. AUGUST: Have physical office space — It goes beyond cache, as I’d like to mark the growth of TP with a location that our sources and readers can visit. This may be closer than expected.
9. SEPTEMBER: Monthly multimedia skill use — I’m only savvy with the most basic photography, videography and audio editing techniques, but I want to keep them sharp. Using the Story Shuffle platform, which can also help with my storytelling, and others, I want to monthly shoot video, take photos and edit audio. I want to look back on 2011 and know that I’m stronger in those places and others.
10. OCTOBER: Focus online presence — I have lingering outdated WordPress.com accounts that I want cleaned and projects that aren’t adequately shared online. I also have dead links and other problems in my portfolio and blog here. By the year’s end, I want to feel like all my professional work of merit is available online.
11. NOVEMBER: Business reorganization — Part of owning a business is organization. I am proud of how I have led this for TP on the fly, but I want to come out of 2011 feeling a filing cabinet, Google docs, any business recording tools and the like are also completely on point.
12. DECEMBER: Update my print portfolio — I have a binder of old clips from my college days sitting in my office. I want to get that spruced up and available.

I also shared my personal resolutions for this year here.

How could these be better, more actionable? Where are your resolutions? Think I have a shot with these?

My mother died yesterday. I’m proud of the obituary I was able to write for her in our hometown newspaper.

It’s also available on the funeral parlor Web site, or you can read it below.

She was a good woman. It’s a shitty thing but everyone has shitty things happen to them.

NEWTON — Carol Wink, 51, died on Wednesday, June 17th at Morristown Memorial Hospital after complications related to a long fought illness.

The beloved wife, mother, sister and aunt was born in the Harding Park neighborhood of the Bronx on Sept. 1, 1957 to William and Geraldine (Howell) Dolan. After growing up in Plainview, Long Island, she moved with her family in 1986 to Sussex County, a rural paradise she came to love. She worked for 18 years as a devoted educator, teaching first and second grade and then reading comprehension at the Sparta Alpine School, where she was named Teacher of the Year in 2001.

Carol is survived by her loving husband, George, with whom she was two months shy of a 30th wedding anniversary; her daughter, Maureen; her son, Christopher; two loving sisters, Eileen and Nancy, and their husbands, Mike Lorio and Joe Cipollone; their children, Daniel and Cassie and Joseph and Matthew; two cherished sisters-in-law, Jeanie and Linda Wink; a strange looking dog and two cats, including her favorite, Milo.

Aside from education, her greatest passions came in the kitchen, using a library of cook books and a knack for experimentation and exploration to craft meals of exceptional regard that will be greatly missed by all, especially her eternally hungry son. The green thumb gardener was known for coaxing her husband into playing with dirt, mulch and plants on big, beautiful Sussex County weekends, as well as incorporating the fruits and vegetables she grew into her favorite meals. She will be remembered best for her passion, humor and eggplant rollatini.

Last August, she was thrilled to make her first trip across the pond, spending a week in London. She recently turned over her constant reading habits to planning a trip to California, showing her love for travel.

She is a 1979 Bachelor’s of Arts graduate from Hofstra University with a Master in the Art of Teaching from Marygrove College and other post-graduate work from Centenary College of New Jersey. She was excited to return to the classroom this fall to use a recently completed Orton Gillingham Teacher Certificate from Farleigh Dickinson University to tutor students suffering with Dyslexia and other reading difficulties.

In September 2005, she was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, which she battled courageously, including a period of time during which she taught full-time and received regular chemotherapy treatments. Her weakened immune system left her unable to beat a lung inflammation that came in her final weeks.

Funeral services will be held 11 a.m. on Tuesday at the Smith-McCracken Funeral Home, 63 High Street, Newton. Interment will be held at Newton Cemetery. Visitation will be held on Monday from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. at the funeral home. The family asks that in lieu of flowers, memorial donations be made to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, North Jersey Chapter, 14 Commerce Drive, Suite 301, Cranford, NJ 07016.

Back on My Feet founder Anne Mahlum and members of the organization in 2007.

I’ve decided to step away from self-employment.

I’ve spent the last year of my life freelancing, by some accounts, at perhaps the worst time to do so in my life and arguably the worst time in the history of journalism.

After a meeting of the most influential media leaders in the region made clear no drastic foundational investment would be made into niche news anytime soon, I knew I needed to secure my finances — as a new homeowner, especially — and take a more cautioned approach toward building News Inkubator, Technically Philly and NEast Philly.

A funny thing happened not a week or two after I made this decision. A friend made me aware of a job opportunity I actually wanted.

On Mon. Jan. 18, I walked into a Locust Street building in Center City Philadelphia and began defining what a media director should do for homeless advocacy nonprofit Back on My Feet.

I spent nearly three full semesters working with Philadelphia government oversight organization Committee of Seventy in the beginning of my college career, offering some policy research, the occasional graphic design tweak and other gap-filling. For almost all of it, I worked under the tutelage of a precocious, 25-year-old, workaholic, marathoner North Dakota native named Anne Mahlum.

She was fun and challenging, and I knew then that she had her sights set high.

We had two breakfasts in summer 2007. During one, she told me about telecommunications giant Comcast luring her to a high-paying lobbying gig. During the second, she told me that after accepting the job, she reconsidered and launched Back on My Feet, what started as a homeless running club and has now become an advocacy agency that creates a community around running and then connects participants with job training and job placement programs and will be in four cities by May.

Nearly three years later, her organization needed a 14th staff member and thought it should be someone to handle the group’s Web presence and develop relationships with traditional media.

I interviewed with Anne and others Monday Jan. 11, had a follow up by phone that Wednesday and accepted later that day. Told I was pitted against an older crop of more traditionally experienced marketing people, I pitched hard on my role extending to content creation around the issues of homelessness, job creation and other related social advocacy plots.

Back on My Feet had caught the attention of runners already, but to continue to grow they needed a world of people interested in social justice. To attract them to our site — and eventually bring them on as volunteers and donors — let me create a blog that chronicles the plights of the men and women with whom we work and the conversations that are happening around these issues.

It could prove to be more serious journalism than what I’ve done the past year as a full-time freelance reporter.

After I started, here’s what I more officially wrote out:

My five primary responsibilities now as I see them currently (I put them in order of time I think I’d spend on them, from most to least time):

1. *Our own content — I think this has the potential to be most important and involve the most time. The primary vehicle for this would be a blog placed highly and incorporated fully into BackonMyFeet.org. This would be the daily-updated stream of all BOMF content, including standard organization updates and offers, but buttressed with multimedia, interviews/day-in-the-life pieces on residential members, tracking of media coverage and perhaps a weekly/monthly podcast on homelessness and systemic joblessness.
2. Social media — Interject BOMF into the conversation, connect with people online and build branding (Twitter and Facebook to start)
3. Legacy media — Make traditional story pitches to established media, leveraging my existing relationships.
4. Partnerships and events — I think my role is natural to help develop, or at least highlight potential partners in content and in our mission (other nonprofits, academic and research institutions, etc.)
5. Independent media — Indie blogs, smaller niche publications and the like shouldn’t be ignored — smaller, more targeted audiences often mean they’ll take even more seriously the coverage

To start, I’ll have to trim down our existing bloated site and otherwise transition — introducing myself and finding my place. Beginning my third week, I’m quite pleased and look forward to tracking our progress.

I’m sure there will be updates to come.

Some measurable starting points:

1. Using internal analytics, but also a (perhaps very) rough guide can be seen publicly here, which shows about 3,700 unique visitors in December
2. Social media accounts: (Starting on my first Monday morning) Our Twitter account had 335 followers, 99 tweets and was listed 30 times, in addition to just about 35 @replies since April (I got nearly half that yesterday alone, including GPTMC); Our Facebook account had 727 friends and had fallen inactive; Our Youtube account had 10 uploads and 12 subscribers
3. We’ll also try to track the volunteers and donors who come over the transom of the Web.

Though certainly now only during nights and weekends, I will remain an active partner in Technically Philly and NEast.

Earlier this month, I bought another year on this domain and began a third year posting here. Back in February, I had my 500th post and am just shy of my 700th now. In July, I launched the self-hosted version of this site, which has left quite a bit of Google juice over at the free version here.

Anniversaries abound, so why not celebrate the end of another calendar year by noting the 10 best read posts I had of the past 12 months.

In order of most trafficked, including views from this site’s previous incarnation when relevant.

1. Journalism classes that aren’t regularly available but should be 22Apr09
2. Advertising with @TechnicallyPHL and what other Web startups can learn 05Jun09
3. Your new journalism job: what do reporters, editors get paid? 14Jan09
4. Hyperlocal news sites worth following 23Dec09
5. PW: College rapper Asher Roth from Bucks County to hip hop star 15Apr09
6. The Temple News: my four-years with the college newspaper of Temple University 15May09
7. What was lost in the coverage of a student journalist and a Philadelphia cop 17Apr09
8. Inquirer: How unemployment affects men 04Feb09
9. Hyperlocal news: a definition 29Sep09
10. How to start a freelance writing career without writing samples 09Mar09

In the interest of disclosure and so it doesn’t seem as though I’m posturing, let’s keep in mind that because of my particularly modest traffic, the top handful only account for a thousand views or so.

And because traffic isn’t everything — right? — here are five others I liked but didn’t get the most eyeballs.

1. Content breakdown of a healthy, efficient hyperlocal news site 07Dec09
2. First to report Rendell named Obama’s vice presidential running mate: how an entire newsroom tricked me 23Jan09
3. How some established journalists see the rest of us 26Oct09
4. Seven habits of highly effective freelance journalists 02Mar09
5. Reflections on CUNY graduate school New Journalism Models Hyperlocal camp 25Nov09

If the theme of my 2009 was slow start, the theme for 2010 needs to be next steps.

This past year wasn’t a great one.

I was blessed with so much (some of which I will be sharing soon), but my first year of freelancing was a struggle (though I remain excited about the freedom). I made less than $20,000 and don’t have enough saved for the taxes I need to pay.

While I think I got some great clips this year, launched a promising technology community blog and was part of a new hyperlocal news site, it’s clear none of those projects are on the verge of keeping me from being tax delinquent or getting into debt.

This year was all about a start.

I started a lot of projects. I learned a lot and wrote a lot. But it certainly all moved slowly.

2010 is going to be a much better year, to be sure. It just needs to be focused on bolstering these opportunities and others. My resolutions reflect just that.

Here’s to 2010.

Update: Today, Dec. 19, 2010, I’ve gone back and looked at my goals. It’s interesting to see a split and failure to finish most of these. Three of these resolutions I succeeded in meeting definitively and met in spirit a fourth; I outright failed at three, and two became un-applicable as the year wore on.

I also created personal resolutions and goals to manage on my new home in 2010, but with a new year, I want to set goals for my professional self in 2010.

After all, 2009 was a brutal year, so 2010 should be plenty better.

1. Stabilize my income — Update: I did that in January 2010 in an unexpected way. It’s varied wildly throughout 2009. One way or another, I want to focus it.
2. A new, solid pitch at least once a week — Update: Did that until I got the above mentioned job. (to buttress other work and those fed to me)
3. Contact a new client at least once a month — Update: Did that until I got the above mentioned job. In writing, editing, multimedia or other
4. 100 RSS subscribers for this site, up from 60 today — Update: Nope.
5. 1,500 Twitter followers, from the 960 today (I hope a plurality of them can offer value in connecting to sources, ideas and content) — Update: nope, though, at nearly 1400, I got closer.
6. Distribute remaining 600 business cards — Update: Nope. I still have more than 400.
7. Bring Technically Philly to profitability — Update: By way of its parent company, we did do that, as I’ve come on full-time.
8. Earn grant funding for real journalism — Update: Yes, for both NEast and Technically Philly.
9. Write regularly on this site – Update: check! It’s a place to improve my web writing and connect with audiences. I want to perhaps write a little less but make the product more meaningful.

Update 11/22/09 @ 12:06 p.m.: Signs of this enforcement from Philebrity and the Inquirer.

Philadelphia police are introducing a bicycle enforcement campaign beginning tomorrow in Center City.

Forgive the lack of a direct focus on journalism, the future of news and my clips on this, but, as someone who uses bicycling transport fairly regularly (to save money and get exercise, something any freelancer would understand the value of making habit), it’s an issue I take seriously.

If you’re down, read some of my perspective and watch a video about police officers in another city using “discretion” with such bicycle street-law enforcement.

Anyone with any interest in urban dynamic will dig the debate, at least. The short of it is that there’s an increasing dependence on the bicycle to commute in Philadelphia — a walkable city and much maligned mass transit agency perhaps adding to the push grown out of other elements — and that’s putting bicyclists at odds with what had been for the past half-century a very dominant car culture of suburban commuters driving into Center City and driving home.

Now, with this new campaign, enforcement of myriad of driving code violations — from running a red light to traveling on a sidewalk or rolling through a stop sign — would ostensibly be taken as seriously with bicyclists as they are with car drivers.

On the Greater Philadelphia Bicycle Coalition blog post about the new campaign, I read a few great points with which I agreed and synthesized, so I thought I’d share them.

1. Motorized vehicles and man-powered bicycles are very different. It seems outrageous that the negative externalities of motorized transport will be ignored in so that bicyclists will be penalized the same as a car driver breaking code.
2. There are absolutely roadways that are unfriendly to bicyclists but have large yet unsused sidewalks — take a trip down Roosevelt Blvd. and much of Frankford Avenue north of Fishtown. Does that not seem outrageous to be fined? If every road has a bike path, then fine, but they don’t. (This campaign mentions a focus on Center City but is it wrong to think it will extend elsewhere if a cop wants to do so?)
3. Let’s reemphasize the difference between a one ton piece of steel that goes no less than 25 mph on city roads and all of 150-200 pounds that can’t exceed 7 mph.
4. What is the enforcement like, as Brendan said. Am I going to be arrested for not having ID and then feeling less than enthused about being forced to give out my name. [Update: City Council man Frank DiCicco has introduced legislation to require a one-time $20 registration fee for bicycle plates.]

Are those totally bogus?

I take seriously giving the right of way, but I absolutely cross red lights and stop signs, something that as a bicyclist I feel more able to do because of my far slower rate of speed. Stop signs and stop lights and the roadway system has been developed over the last 50 years for cars. That doesn’t make sense for a bicyclist, so isn’t there room to let some of this go?

Now, if this is just meant to be an enforcement campaign on the books so that those who drive or ride dangerously can be penalized, then sure, I have nothing to fight about that. But I can’t say that in my four years of riding pretty heavily in Philadelphia that I have too often seen bicylist behavior that warranted $120 fines.

Below watch a video made for Portland, Oregon police department to talk about using “discretion” in enforcing its code.

Here are a few I’ve been thinking about:

• Write: I want to write more here, journal more, more establish my freelancing career, get pieces into big newspapers and magazines and be part of meaningful journalism. Most important, I want to think I am a better writer, reporter and journalist a year from now than I am now.
• Technology: I need to toe more into the obvious steps of tech, multimedia and web design. I want to invest time in using my point and click camera, editing video and audio and move this website maybe to a self-hosted version without the wordpress.com.
• I want to make $30,000: Making that pre-tax total would mean I made more than I did as a post-graduate intern and allow me to save a little bit of money. I could do this freelancing, but I also might look for some writing and journalism jobs.
• Make a book out of WDSTL: I created a lot of content with the cheap travel video podcast while backpacking in Europe, so I’d like to do something more with it.
• I want to say ‘I don’t know’ more: All of us get trapped into making educated guesses and generally trying to answer questions or offer opinions for matters we don’t know. I want to stop that. If I don’t know something, I want to
• Frame clips and diploma: I have some great newspaper clips and that diploma I paid so much for, so I’d like to display them to show them off a bit and be reminded of how hard I worked for them.
• Update portfolio: I have a print portfolio that I’d like to update.

Those are my clearest objectives for 2009. What are yours?

ChristopherWink.com was always meant to be my professional Web site, where I blogged about the interests and experiences that involve being a young journalist today. I decided I needed a place to display my more personal experiences, particularly pursuing My Life To Do List. I am announcing the soft launch of that site today.

When I was 13, I sat down in my bedroom of my parents’ home in rural northwest New Jersey and I composed a list of 26 things I had to do before I died.

From time to time, I have updated it, so that the list, now in the form of an Excel spreadsheet, is a more than 300-item syllabus for my life. It still governs the choices I make and experiences I want to have. It’s where my money goes and dreams lead.

So, if you’re hear for the chronicles of a young journalist, tips and advice, then stay here. But, I’d love it if you followed both. There I will share all those items I cross off the list, and the many experiences that never made it on the list, but perhaps should have. It is, to steal a line from a friend, a “memoir in motion.”

Still, that site isn’t as developed as I’d like it to be, and it won’t get any better now that I am traveling in Europe, podcasting with We Don’t Speak the Language, even if I will be crossing off plenty of items during the backpacking jaunt.

Nevertheless, stick with both, My Life To-Do List will be a far less regularly updated experience.