2017. Amazing, but cautionary.
I feel like a broken record at this point. Every year, I say today ‘Wow, that went by so fast’. But I feel like the past years didn’t even come close to how 2017 felt. I’m not even sure what I even achieved this year.
2017 is done and dusted. What a ride that was. A few years ago, I called 2015 a transformative year for me. While I’d like to call this year transformative too, I think it was more ‘enlightening’.
This year, I think I had both the best time, and also possibly one of the most challenging times of my life. Moving to America for half of the year, it was not an easy choice to leave Perth and live out of a suitcase for that long. But I was certain that my time would be far better spent over there than in Australia. (And I think I was still right about that. XD)
It was an absolute privilege in what I helped professionally contribute to this year. I traveled to places around the world I never thought I’d visit, and I got to meet a variety of personal heroes that I never EVER thought I’d see. I was able to make so many new friends, and learn so many new things. Truly a privilege that I will always cherish. If anyone else is considering a career in the Silicon Valley area doing the same, I would whole-heartedly recommend it.
But unfortunately. Circumstances can change, sometimes completely out of the blue. For the latter half of the year, my current situation completely changed and all of my plans were thrown out the window. I had no idea what I was going to do, or what would happen to me now. And to boot, I learned that because of my utter disregard for my own health for the last few years, that had taken its toll on me more than I’d noticed. Thankfully, while it came off as absolutely dire initially, it turned out to be more of an ‘urgent fixer-upper’. So of that, I am very thankful.
With all that said, I should definitely say that to everyone I talked to in these past few months, thank you so much for your support. It’s been so fantastic that when I was in a real rut, everyone was so forthcoming and helpful.
In any case, on the twilight of 2018, things are a lot better now. My health (while still WIP) is now under control and I have a clear path for 2018. I’m excited at the potential this coming year will bring.
So to sum that all up, here’s a few lessons I learned this year:
- Don’t forget about your own needs. It’s incredibly important to unplug and relax. It’s not impressive to not do that.
- Don’t forget that if push comes to shove, business is sadly, only business. Going above and beyond the call of duty is sometimes not worth it.
- NOTHING is worth sacrificing your health over. NOTHING. You can make time to go to the gym. You can make time to go for that walk.
In any case, all is good now. I feel a bit wiser, and happy that I learned these lessons at the time I did. For anyone else starting out, I hope you can learn them from someone else before you experience them.
In terms of new year’s resolutions, 2017 was absolutely the worst for me. I got nothing done. Now that my circumstances have changed, I’m going to reset everything and try again. 🙂
Resolutions for 2018:
- Get healthy. Lose weight. This time it’s serious.
- Write more blogs. Oh my god. This poor site got NO LOVE this year. 🙁
- Play more video games. Seriously, even if I have to take time off iComics.
- Manage my open source libraries better. I tackled support alright this year, but if it gets any more frequent, I might have to start being really strict.
- Ship the files downloader feature in iComics. This bloody thing is 2 years in the making now.
- Stream more on Twitch. I FINALLY got the sweet username I was after. Better not let it go to waste. 😀
- Do more karaoke. And maybe put it on YouTube. XD
I’m not sure if anyone actually reads these, but if you got this far, thank you for indulging me. So long 2017. Let’s rock out in 2018. 🙂
Thanks so much for everything. 🙂