Friday, December 31, 2010

2010: A Retrospective

As 2010 comes to a close, I want to take a look back on this year and appreciate where the events of the past 365 days have brought me.

2009 ended as one of the most challenging years in my life.  I was very unhappy, confused, depressed, lonely and really didn't care about much at all.  I decided in the final two weeks that I needed to turn things around and the best way to do that was to keep myself too busy to think about things.  I set many daily, weekly and monthly goals across all of my personal creative interests / hobbies, personal finances and professional career.

The year started great, I had a new things to keep my attention and I started achieving goals at a very rapid and satisfying rate.  In February things started to back slip and I found myself questioning why I was working so hard at things that didn't seem to matter in the "big picture" of life.  I started doing a bunch of soul searching and started to slip back into a deep depression.  All of this came to a head in March, when I was forced to learn a very hard life lesson.  Although the next several months were very hard, and I wasn't sure how things would end up, all worked out as best it could.

Starting in April I was able to take a step back and look inward at myself to try and figure out why I had spiraled to the all-time low I had hit in March.  I started reading a lot and changed the focus of the books from interests / hobbies to self help topics and the study of why people do the things we do... diving into several Psychology topic areas and finding that I really enjoyed the study.

The next several months had me rebuilding my self image, and getting back to the person that I remembered before 2008. I met knew friends and forged new relationships.  I started to enjoy life again.

I had several goals around losing weight and at my high point I was able to lose almost 45 lbs.  The bad news is I'm pretty sure I've put most of that back on... boo!  Oh well - it gives me another goal for 2011, right? 

The final months of the year finished strong with new songwriting projects, website consulting jobs, being signed as Technical Reviewer to three books currently being published, and a freshly renewed spirit for the holiday season!

As I look back on the documented goals that I had for 2010, I can't say that I managed to accomplish them all, however here are some things that I did manage to accomplish the following...

  • Moved content and preparing for launch of www.thinknadon.com as the central site for all projects that I'm involved in.
  • Cut way back on Fast Food consumption
  • Am now back to being a non-drinker, with estimated savings of $5k per year
  • Have written and composed four new songs this year
  • Read over 60 books
  • Achieved many of goals around hobbies and interests
  • Designed three new t-shirt designs for ZicApparel
  • Completed 3 of 7 hiking trails at the Waterloo Discovery Center
I'm sure there are many more things, but I'll now turn my attention to 2011 and making it the best year ever!

I'll be posting my "2011: A Look Forward" post on Sunday and it will be available on the new website only, so please update your bookmarks and follow me on my journey.

Thanks so much for reading...

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