At about this point during the New Year’s holiday many are relaxing with their friends and family, recovering from hangovers after a night of partying, making resolutions and setting goals that will guide them, hopefully, for the rest of the year.  While I’m not hanging out with family or friends and therefore not having to recover from a hangover, I am focused, immediately, on a single goal.  That goal is to make January 2nd the best day possible for my beautiful wife, Laura.

This time last year I was busy typing away a similar post where I explain why this is such a hard goal to accomplish:

Every year Laura hates her birthday because it falls on the day AFTER one of the biggest party days of the year.  That sucks.  She turned 21 the day AFTER New Years.  Our friends are always still hung over and/or tired the day after. No one ever wants to do anything and it usually ends up making her sad.

This year saw a lot of change for us and tons of memorable experiences.  At the end of January we relocated to Boston so that I could launch New Marketing Labs along with Chris Brogan and Colin Browning.  This was hard on Laura because it meant that she had to move the farthest away she has ever been from family and friends.  She had to find a new job and get settled in a big city.  While she was trying to get settled in Boston, she was also right in the middle of planning our wedding which required weekend field trips all over the place including many visits to New York and Connecticut.  Either one of those events would be stressful enough to make someone lose their mind.

Usually through change like that, you would have your significant other to help you get through it.  But, unfortunately, Laura spent a lot of that time, and throughout the rest of 2009, having to deal with all of this by herself.  Sure, I was there for her but 2009 saw a sharp spike in my travel which caused me to be away from her a lot.  In previous years I’ve only had to travel a few times throughout the year, even though during those times they were generally long trips to the Philippines.  This year, though, had me traveling a few times per month adding up to around 50 times for the year.  When I was home, I was extremely focused on making New Marketing Labs and my steakhouse, Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse, successes.  In a forever mode of playing catch up, we didn’t have the opportunity to spend a lot of quality time together.  Don’t get me wrong, we have many lifelong memories from 2009 like sailing around the British Virgin Islands, honeymooning in St. Maarten, celebrating the 4th of July in Boston, and going to both Red Sox and Celtics games.

All in all, 2009 was a year of a lot of adjustments for us, most of them amazing changes.  For those changes that weren’t so much fun, I’m forever indebted to Laura.

I am so fortunate to be married to such a wonderful person.  She is incredibly beautiful, smart, loving, understanding and everything I ever dreamed of.  Every day I think I’m going to wake up from that dream.  That is why, last year I asked YOU for a favor:

My goal today is to get as many people as possible to wish her a Happy Birthday in the comments below.  Do you think we think we can get 25 people to wish her Happy Birthday? 50? 100 or more?

Since I had published last year’s post right at midnight, by the time I wished her Happy Birthday, she had about 25 people joining me.  In total, there were 167 comments left last year and she was floored by the response.

So, I want to run this experiment again this year but I want to add a twist to it.  Not only do I want to see if we can beat the 167 wonderful birthday wishes that Laura received last year, I want to see if we can do a little good on her behalf as well.  One of Laura’s favorite charities is the Jimmy Fund.  The Jimmy Fund supports “the fight against cancer in children and adults at Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, helping to raise the chances of survival for cancer patients around the world.”

Do you think we could raise $1,000 to help the Jimmy Fund?  I think we can.  In fact, I think we can raise more than that but let’s shoot for $1,000.

If you could spare the cost of a coffee or two for Laura’s birthday to help these children, I would be extremely grateful and I know Laura will be too.

Thanks for all that you do…