December 29, 2009

  • 2009 in summary

    I'm a big believer in the statement that we create our own realities, and the reality I created for myself this year has not been a fun one.  As such, I think it's important to acknowledge where I went wrong, and make some decisions about what I want to change for the future.  These kinds of "gestures" have more juice when they're made publicly, so here goes.

    2009 in review

    2009 was an odd year for me.  It was full of "hurry up and wait" moments, and I ultimately feel I've gone backwards over the year in many respects. 

    •  I went into the year hoping to start up a small business on the side building online marketing strategies and producing podcasts for small businesses, but ended up so swamped by work from my employers and their clients that I have had no chance to get anything useful done on the business at all. 
    • I fell into the trap of spending more on the corporate AMEX than I was getting back from the company in "per diem" allowances while while travelling interstate (somewhere around 90 days since July), and have had to juggle some finances as a result. 
    • I went over time (and therefore budget) on a couple of projects I was working on for various reasons, with one of the big ones has been that I've fallen back into a fairly deep bout of depression, and been dealing with other people's expectations by hiding from them until things get too political for me not to complete and hand off the work products they've been sweating on me to deliver.  This is not a rational choice, but mental health problems are rarely grounded in rationality. 
    • I've struggled with exercise and weight this year - they were going to increase and decrease respectively, but depression, travel and working from home have all had an impact on my activity levels and motivation.
    • I was going to get some serious recording done this year, but I've had to deal with hardware issues on my main recording workstation, and have not had the free cash to perform the required upgrades to deal with the problems.  As a result, I've got big fat diddly zero done creatively this year other than writing a couple of tunes.
    • I also had intentions of doing some serious tech blogging this year over at http://ozziemedes.blogspot.com/ but as discussed earlier, I've been too swamped with wortk (or too busy with work-avoidance strategies) to do the kind of experimentation and tinkering it takes to create blog material.
    • Despite a job-code promotion in 2008, the pay-rise promised me when my new employer (which bought my previous employer in July last year) was buried in the dust of my performance review (less than stellar as a result of depression) from this year.  My expectations for additional "Variable Performance Bonus" allocations have not been met either - I've had bigger annual bonuses from my old employer.
    • Oh - and then there's the matter of the car... I had a Suzuki Grand Vitara on a novated lease that I took on holidays to Western Australia in March.  I got back to Adelaide at the end of March sans car, having tipped it on its side not far from Pemberton, down in Karri country.  The trip itself was still good, but dealing with not having a car for the latter half of this year has been a further blow to my self-esteem which I could have gone without.

    Basically, it's been a shitty year that has left me financially worse off, less inspired, emotionally exhausted, continually on the verge of tears and feeling betrayed by the company which is currently my only source of income.  There are changes I need to make in the coming year, issues I need to resolve from this year, and a bunch of fires I need to stoke up to start moving my life forwards again.  I'll write more about them in my next post.