Now that the blogosphere’s annual flood of forced optimism for this years soon-to-be failed resolutions have washed back out to sea I might get one in myself but being of the opinion that resolutions are easier to break when you make them I’ll avoid such bollocks and move swiftly onto last year’s unintentional achievements.
- My relationship with Carolynne persists in spite of myself, her patience is commendable if not a little masochistic. 4.5 years strong it’s close to breaching the heliopause of my memory, the point where the shock of alcohol and other abuses break down my past and I’ll have to assume we’ve always been together because the anachronisms are too much hassle to deal with.
- I ended years of saving and bought a house. Having watched the BBC’s house price charts nose-dive over the past 12 months, my predictions for the bottom of the market (and therefore right time to buy) proved to be more perfect than even I could’ve predicted having broken the 0% price change line about a week before my purchase completed. Go me! Although there were predictions of a relapse into decline this year but I’m not too bothered as I’m thinking long-term.
- We bought a dog, Holly who was rescued at the age of 12 weeks is now 10 months old and about 3 times the size and still growing! She’s proven to be a very loving well-behaved dog on most days and even tugged the heart-strings of my mum who traditionally isn’t a great friend of dogs.
- I survived a year of recession while maintaining employment at Zen Internet, I will have been working there 6 years on March 1st. I started a new role in August which is giving me new challenges.
- One of my mid-year resolutions to learn a programming language has been very successful. After deliberation and eventually setting my sights on Python I read 3 books and I have a few small projects ongoing which I work on most weeks.
- I have continued to play chess, not as much as I’d like and whether I’m getting better or not is debatable but I’m keeping with it.
- I bought a new bicycle, I didn’t get much chance to ride it during the year though as I was concerned by the traffic in Prestwich which is on a major trunk road into Manchester and therefore extremely busy. Having moved to Ramsbottom though I expect to venture out more in the spring as it’s much quieter here.
- We went to Budapest in the spring which was my first holiday abroad in nearly 10 years. Compared with the previous year this is an annual increase of infinite percent! But will this trend continue?
- I passed my ITIL foundation exam with high marks which is good. Interesting? Yes. Useful? Maybe.
- I ate my first ever home-grown veg, it was a broad bean, the only one which grew to full size and survived assault by the slugs but it’s an achievement non-the-less!
There’s probably other stuff but none that spring to mind right now. I’m trying to fit writing this into my work lunch-break which being 30 minutes isn’t much time to think let alone type and edit so apologies if it seems a bit rushed, it was.
