Looking back at 2012

I don’t make resolutions but if I did, I would no doubt say something along the lines of “I will write a blog post every week”. Let’s face it, that’s not gonna happen. I will try to write at least one a year though and I’m taking care of 2013′s blog post with the retrospective view of my 2012 that follows. Join me on a self indulgent journey through the year Britain became great again. Or don’t. I don’t care.

Blowing my own trumpet

This year I got too old and fat to run around a sports field blowing a trumpet. You’d be surprised but Drum Corps is a sport for younger, fitter men than I. Not only this but it also takes up ALL of your time. Every weekend and every bank holiday running around like a maniac on top of spending every evening learning music leaves only work time to recover and rest… You can’t do that at work because you’re there to work. And with that I was done.

Goodbye London

Continuing my quest for a better life, I left my London job with FreshNetworks to join a little social PR company in Sussex called Content & Motion. After several years of daily commuting to that London I had decided that I was basically wasting anything up to 5 hours a day going to or from London. The way I saw it, I had three choices: Put up with it, move to London or get a job closer to home. My mere pittance of an agency salary wouldn’t allow me to move to London unless I wanted to do a house/flat share. While this would be great for a spotty student type fresh out of uni, I’m a curmudgeonly old 30 something who gets freaked out by other people’s dirt and muck. It’s not for me. This left only two options, the remaining decision an easy one. Fancy working in Lewes? Yes. Yes I do. And so I did.

The Olympic Effect

You can’t have a 2012 review without mentioning the Olympics. It was bloody good. Team GB were bloody good. The TV coverage was bloody good. It was almost all good. We smashed it. As a nation, we fucking rocked. I couldn’t get enough of it all. I was watching as many events as I could cram in and with the BBC iPlayer, I could literally watch any event any time. Pure sporting heaven.

It wasn’t all good though. Less than 1 week in, on my 36th birthday, a cyclist was knocked off his bike and killed by an official Olympics press bus. I later found out that this was my friend and former colleague from FreshNetworks, Dan Harris. That was a tough day, for myself and everyone that knew him.

R.I.P. Fella. I miss you.

The new world

Not long after joining C&M, I was told that we were just about to step into an acquisition process. In simple terms Content & Motion was being bought by another agency called Beyond, an agency with offices in New York, San Francisco, London and now Lewes. We finally went live, after a long period of secrecy and due diligence, in September. From this point onwards, I worked for Beyond.

Sailing the seven seas

Just as our little agency set sail, so did I. Clarissa and I decided, almost on impulse, to book a holiday in Norfolk. On a boat! We hired a massive 7 berth luxury (relative luxury that is) river cruiser and floated around the Norfolk Broads for a week. We fished, we ate, we drank, we walked, we floated and we even played crazy golf in Great Yarmouth. It was an amazing week which, after dropping the boat back (amazingly in one piece) to the boat yard, ended with a wonderful day Thrigby Hall. Probably one of the best holidays I’ve ever had.

The big move

Clarissa and I had been looking at moving to Lewes for a while so my new job, being in Lewes, made a move to Lewes an even more attractive prospect. After a couple of months of looking at properties, putting in offers, telling estate agents to go forth and multiply and general stress, we finally moved to Lewes at the beginning of December. As I write this, I’ve not yet been here a full month so it’s still a bit of a novelty but I’m loving it. Unfortunately we just missed out on being in the new place for bonfire night, which is a big deal in Lewes, but we made it in time for Christmas. Normally a bit of a Grinch myself, Christmas isn’t usually a big deal for me but for the first time in ages, I actually quite enjoyed it and might actually start looking forward to it again one day. Maybe.

Fatness

As you will see my work life balance is now in check and as you’d expect I’m getting quite fat. Actually, I’ve been getting fat since about 2005 but I’m going to get REALLY fat if I’m not careful now. A good life can have a bad effect on a man peeking through the windows of middle age. I’ve decided that it’s time to start running. I’m only a couple of sessions in and I’m finding it exhausting but hopefully, if I can stick with it, I will keep what little fitness I have left.

To 2013

So, no new year’s resolutions. Personally, I like to try every day to be a better person than I was the day before. That’s a daily resolution.

Happy New Year and all the best for 2013!