Another year, another rollercoaster.
(The following blog entry was originally posted on Blogger on 12/30/11)
It's the last work day of 2011, and my last posting of 2011, and I'll need the weekend to mentally prepare for another new year. All's quiet with clients as this is the eve of New Year's Eve. I should be doing digital house-cleaning with my work emails but can't face it today. All those thousands of emails — received or sent — that need to be deleted or sub-foldered. Sigh. I'll have to chip away at it over the weekend at some point. I must start the new year off with a clean slate. And when I say clean slate, I mean a near-empty Inbox.
Like the title of this blog, 2011 was yet another roller coaster in the life of a small business owner. The first half of the year seemed like imminent doom, the 2nd half seemed like a tornado inside a hurricane (see previous posts).
This year we utilized more freelancers/contractors than ever before, and that was good for me. Since I'm the VP of Design & Emerging Media at O2 Agency (designer and/or design project manager on all projects), the amount of man hours required to get our assignments off the ground can be a bit daunting. We took on some very large scale projects this year, and having an additional art director and production artist on hand for support really made the difference between sanity and insanity for me. Though my wife would tell you I strayed into Crazy Town and stayed there in Oct and Nov. (Sorry hon. The stress was unreal.) December was nuts too, but the pace did slow as we got closer to Christmastime. I dealt with only 1 design emergency while on vacation, so that was key to a recuperative holiday break.
On a personal note, my wife and I spent a week's vacation on Clearwater Beach, FL while visiting my family in that area. We were greeted with warm, sunny weather for almost the entire week, and we enjoyed a lot of quality time with my mother, brother, sister-in-law and my nieces. My wife managed to run a low-grade fever the entire week, despite having no other symptoms of the flu or anything else (as I've mentioned in the past, she's been battling Lyme Disease for many years, and this was probably just another one of those "surprise" gifts that Lyme brings). And that impinged upon our ability to go to every family party and social function. But she at least got a couple opportunities to walk on the beach and absorb some rays, and experience the sugar sand it's famous for. We stayed at the Hilton, which was fairly low key for the week that wrapped around Christmas weekend. Though it is a bit family-oriented and can even be rowdy at night with the 20-something set.
To get around, we rented that new Fiat J-Lo car. It's actually a pretty nice ride for a compact car. It seemed to turn heads with the 11-15 year old girl demographic anyway, which both my wife and I thought was pretty hilarious. One middle-aged guy mockingly wanted to drag race me on the Clearwater Causeway bridge. Heh. I actually think I would have smoked him if I'd taken the challenge seriously.
For New Year's Eve, we plan to hang with friends downtown in the Union Square area. And since they're on a high-floor, we might get a view of Times Square. We'll see.
Cheers everybody. Here's hoping you all had a great 2011, and that 2012 looks even more promising!