At last count, I have three different websites, two public Twitter accounts, one anonymous Twitter account, two Facebook pages and about five other social networks to discuss my thoughts. But here, on my personal site, the one I’ve had the longest, I want to talk about 2012.

Although I can pretend that 2011 wasn’t one of the most screwed up years in my life, it absolutely was one that I never want to go back to ever again. I’ve had a few of those in my lifetime: 1999 — I made a bad call and lost every friend I had, minus a guy in Pennsylvania and his dog, a pair I still have yet to meet in person. 2007 — The death of my sister, Kara, at just 27 years old. 2008 — When my wife was laid off for the first of three times, her grandmother passed from pancreatic cancer and our dog had to be put down. And then there’s 2011, the year in which my wife and I went into financial turmoil and finally came out of it better in the end.

In baseball terms, it’s called a transitional year; a period of time when a team isn’t expected to do very well, but the time is necessary for the team to contend the following season. After the hell that was 2010 (with the only bright point being the birth of our son), 2011 should be this last step before a kick ass 2012. That’s the hope, anyways.

So to prepare for this new year, I’ve been getting together a few projects that I’m pretty excited about. I talk about them over at Whipps Industries, but here’s the general concept: passive income.

I realized last year that although I could keep things status quo for myself and my family, there’s only so much time in the day and I tend to get burned out if I don’t give myself at least a little time off. And yet, I need to improve my income because at some point in the near future, we’re hoping to have another child, and if all things go well, my wife will stay home for part of that time as well. To do that, we need to make up her income, and although it’s not that substantial right now, it may be by the time the baby comes.

To make up that income, I need to create money when I’m not actively working. I attempted to do this in the past by selling prints of my work, but it turns out that I’m more focused on building my writing business than my photography, because I feel it’s a more lucrative option. That sounds weird to me even as I type it, but when you see the amount of outstanding invoices I have for my photography work, well you’d understand it too.

So what is this mystery project? I’m not going to let it all out yet, but I can say that I’ve been writing a book with my friend Marie Look, and we hope to have it done by sometime in the first quarter of 2012. We’re 22,000 words in so far, and I think that we’ve got an excellent start on this really fun project. Once that’s done, I have two other ideas in the works. One which involves a lot of capital, the other which is more of a time investment than anything.

These things will all start rolling together in 2012, and my hope is that by the time my company turns three in October, that the book will be out, project two will be in full swing and project three will at least be started.

If all things go according to plan, 2012 will be an awesome year.

Happy New Year.