My 2018 Annual Review

Time for my 2018 annu­al review.

In this blog art­icle, I’ll do my best to answer these three ques­tions: ¹This format is inspired by James Clear’s annu­al reviews.

What went well this year?
What did­n’t go so well this year?
What am I work­ing toward?

Here we go:

1. What Went Well This Year?

Lost 12 kg and made myself phys­ic­ally stronger. Got into a healthy exer­cise regi­men and star­ted los­ing some unne­ces­sary weight. What got me star­ted and kept me on track was vari­ous pulse train­ing pro­grams. For some reas­on, my body and gen­er­al mood seem to respond well to phys­ic­al activ­ity meas­ured not by time or res­ist­ance but by time spent in dif­fer­ent pulse zones.

Abandoned ship. I was the first to leave the agency star­tup I was part of. Now, I don’t blame any­one for things not work­ing out, but some­times you real­ise that you’re in a group with dif­fer­ent vis­ions for the future. I don’t regret giv­ing it a go, but I’m most proud of being able to eject myself soon­er rather than later. And, the agency itself closed up shop about five months later any­way. Live, learn — and move on.

Videography and pho­to­graphy. Taking pho­tos has become a con­sist­ent part of my life — and I love it. It has helped me recon­nect with nature, and it’s such a priv­ilege to let go of work and focus on being cre­at­ive for cre­ativ­ity’s sake. Also learnt a lot about video as well, and it would be fun to explore it a bit fur­ther as well.

Paternity leave. Since things did­n’t work out pro­fes­sion­ally, I made good use of my time by mak­ing sure to max out my patern­ity leave this year. Every day I spend qual­ity time with Jack is a moment­ous day, and I’m almost sad that he’s grow­ing and devel­op­ing so fast. Sometimes, I wish that he would stay four years old forever.

2. What Didn’t Go So Well This Year?

Accounting fiasco. Turns out my account­ing firm has done a less-than-stel­lar job with my books. This became ter­ri­fy­ingly appar­ent as I decided to change to anoth­er account­ing firm. We had to undo and recre­ate all the book­keep­ing back to 2014 lit­er­ally. Long story short: I’ve paid twice as much tax as I leg­ally should. So, the good news is that I’ll get some money back. Still, I’d rather have those years of stress undone.

The video idea. For 2017, I thought that video pro­duc­tion would be a great busi­ness. Turns out that cor­por­ate video is still nice-to-have rather than need-to-have. Maybe I was too early here?

3. What Am I Working Toward?

I landed a new job in the first half of 2019. So, this one will be tricky since I want to go for a cor­por­ate role with­in mar­ket­ing, com­mu­nic­a­tions, or PR. This is tricky because every­one I know thinks of me as the quint­es­sen­tial agency- or advisor type. I must get back in the game after my patern­ity leave and hustle. 

#365photochallenge. The idea is to push me to post a photo a day on my Instagram account for the whole of 2019 to get bet­ter at both pho­to­graphy and edit­ing. Also, I’m hop­ing that this will push me to get out with my cam­era more often.