Some years are bigger than others as far as personal growth and change go. I'd like to think I had more happen in 2011 than any other year of my adult life. To review:
In March, I was laid off along with 500 co-workers from the Cable-co. I immediately went to work on aggressively marketing myself, going so far as to open the website "hire.actionjay.com" and leaning on my online contacts to help me find something new in the tech support space. Within a few weeks, I was hired, and ready to start my new job in May.
During my job search, we found out that we were pregnant, and went on a trip to the states to visit Bri's (@action_wife) family and deliver the news. It was a great visit, and a little emotional for the in-laws who would be getting their first ever Grandchild.
After coming home, we realized that we needed a new place with more room for Baby, and jumped on a beautiful apartment in the same building where I once lived several years ago. The management here still recognizes me from back then, which is nice.
Ironically, my new job was two blocks from our original place, and the move re-introduced my hour long daily commute. On the bright side, I was employed. Also, half my transit costs are being reimbursed so it's fair to say that I'm okay with that. Plenty of time to catch up on RSS feeds and podcasts while on the road.
In June, I was lucky enough to make my way into the Mobile / Social Media Conference. I got to see a lot of smart folks talk, and made several local contacts. For all the time I spend interacting with folks over Twitter, it was fun finally meeting some of them face to face, and having my own presence at such an event.
We skipped a couple of the summer festivities this year, like Taste of Sask and The Prairieland Exhibition, in lieu of seeing the musical Wicked, which was amazing. I'm a big fan of making memories together, and this definitely fit the bill.
All throughout the year I've been trying to get back into making music, with small bursts of limited output. I put together a new site to host it all, at music.actionjay.com, and had been working to drive traffic to it by highlighting individual tracks with the hashtag #earmassage on Twitter. It's not something I would remember to do on a daily basis, though, and falls to the wayside a little too easily. I may reinvigorate this with some automation later on.
We finally got the documentation together for Bri's citizenship application, gathering all the time-sensitive materials within a window where they were all valid, and sent it in. They confirmed that they've received it, but we won't hear anything about the next stage for 10-12 months. In the meantime, everyone we know opens every conversation asking how we're doing with this paperwork, and I die a little on the inside.
In August I was named one of the top 25 influencers in Customer Service by Mindtouch, putting me alongside authors and speakers on the topic. For a front-line phone monkey, that's actually pretty cool. I still don't know how much actual clout (or Klout) I have, but it's nice being able to connect with people and talk about something I'm passionate about in a somewhat professional manner.
In September, we visited my family in Swift Current to celebrate my grandfather's 80th birthday. I don't get to see that side of the family very often, and they all adore Bri which makes it very relaxing and a lot of fun.
Around the same time, I discovered that my old employer was ramping up a call center in India. Still a little sore from the layoff, I blogged about it - got on Reddit - and probably brought in more traffic to my site than I'll ever see again. There was some lively conversation around it, though I'm still on good terms with my buddies on the inside. I'm generally not a mean person, and don't burn bridges if I can help it.
In November I participated in National Novel Writing Month in an attempt to rekindle my creativity. I fell short at about half the 50k word goal. But thanks to the help of 750words I achieved a seconary goal of writing at least something every day for the month.
I also made my way to the Saskatoon Barcamp which was an all-day "unconference" style event where anyone who wanted to present could grab a slot. I met many more people this time, and was much more comfortable introducing myself and chatting. I was even recognized a couple times, which is great for my ego.
In anticipation of our baby being born mid-December, we held a quiet early Christmas at home. It was nice having the holiday out of the way while others were still stressing about shopping and wrapping. Our due date came and went afterwards, and we started to get antsy.
Having gone six months without so much as a sick day, I took some time off work as we hit a week overdue with the baby. After a few false starts, we headed in to get induced. A long night of labor followed, which I live-tweeted with the hashtag #action_baby, and our beauful boy Jacob finally came into the world on the morning of the 24th.
He's a week old now, sleeping soundly right beside me while I reminisce with a little Dire Straits playing. I feel good about how the year went, and hope 2012 will be full of positive growth and fun challenges. I'm going to be trying to figure out my work/life balance considering the new addition to the family. I may slow down in some of my hobbies while I dedicate more time to Jacob, and my stream online is likely to take on a whole new slant with lots of first-time parenting fun and games.
0 comments:
Post a Comment