In Review: 2010
Posted on December 29th, 2010Continuing the annual tradition of reviewing the year that was, it is now time to have a look at 2010.
2009 was one of the best, so I knew that it would be difficult to top it. That, of course, did not stop me from trying, and there were some great things that made 2010 a year to remember. Here’s my 2010, in brief:
1. This was my first full year of having my own apartment. Situated close to Central Park and the train to work, it opened up all sorts of possibilities for me. During the summer, I biked a lot. It also connected me closer to the friends that I had made during the Upper East Side small group at Forefront. I have been cooking more (albeit not as much as I would like, but I’ll take this modest improvement). And I’ve been able to open up my home to many visitors (and I’m happy to say that there have been an excellent number of visitors this year). I really do like my apartment and I was happy to extend the lease into 2011.
2. Forefront is a central part of my life, and 2010 has further reinforced this. I’ve been playing guitar (I even busted out the ol’ electric a couple of times!) regularly at their Sunday services, and have co-led a small group on the Upper East Side. This has brought me much closer to the leaders of the church and to the others that help serve, which has created a great group of excellent people to call my church family. I am so immensely grateful for the work being done at and through Forefront, and I really look forward to extending myself further there.
3. My exercise regimen left something to be desired. Specifically, consistency. This recurring issue is very frustrating, although an unpredictable work life does make this somewhat expected. For a while, I was going four or five times a week, but there have also been spans of weeks where I didn’t find a way to go either. Overall, I think that I maintained or slightly decreased my level of physical fitness this year. That said, I am cautiously holding out hope that I can make significant improvements on this in 2011, for reasons I shall explain in the fourth point.
4. This fourth point is about what happened at work. After spending over three years with the Performance Analytics group, I made a switch over to the Portfolio Core Product team. I have new coworkers and a new manager, but am still part of the broader Portfolio Analytics department. (So it was a small move.) As a result of this, I gave up ownership of one of my most proud accomplishments and basically started over; the Core team operates in a completely different paradigm than my former group. Aside from new experiences, another benefit is that I have more manageable hours; there are less surprises and so I think that I will be more capable of maintaining that work-life balance that I want. So, hopefully, I can discipline myself to go to the gym regularly, and so on.
For a number of reasons, I am hoping that 2011 will be a departure from what I have lived up until now. I have been coasting along these past few years, and they do kind of blur into each other. I want 2011 to be different. How this manifests itself remains to be seen (although I can assure you that things like sex changes, drug abuse, and witchcraft are not in the cards), but I want to shake things up. By this time next year, I really want something very noteworthy to write.
So there you have it. I’m not disappointed about 2010, but I’m also not going to sing its praises either. It came, and it’s going, and I’m not going to try and hold onto it. It’s kind of like that decent book that you read a while ago but whose plot you have mostly forgotten. Here’s to a better story for all of us in 2011!
