As 2015 draws to a close, I end up doing my typical “what did I do with my year?” thing. This year is a bit weird though for one simple reason: Stability.
Back in 2012, I also had a stable year, but of a very different sort. 2012 was stability through stagnation. I was gainfully employed, financially secure, things were just OK. But I wasn’t doing any of the things that excited or energized me. I was hating my job, I wasn’t traveling, and I wasn’t making any sort of progress. This was a bad stability.
This year though is really different. This year I’d say was stability through satisfaction.
I’m living the life I want to live. Funny thing though is, I didn’t know this was what I wanted.
Year in Review…
Travel
While we didn’t hit as many countries as 2014 (most of our vacation time and budget ended up going to family obligations this year), we still managed to squeeze in some fun trips around, and continue to feed our travel bug needs.
- US (May)
This was the big trip for the year. When we moved overseas, we realized we could only do a trip back to the US probably every-other-year due to the costs and time required. We went for two weeks, hitting Pennsylvania and Michigan. - London (June)
A short 3-day trip for the Secret Cinema: Star Wars event. There were costumes, makeup, a lot of drinking, and we watched The Empire Strikes back with live actors. - Brussels (July)
My sister visited us in July and informed us we were taking her to Brussels as she’d never been. So we hopped on a train and were on our way. I think this was our fourth time in the city, and we still love it. - Germany (August)
Business trip to Cologne for the Game Developer’s Conference & Gamescom. A lot of fun, learned a lot, but was exhausted by the time I got home. - UK (Christmas)
Christmas + a wedding in Beverley. Never been to much of the UK outside of London, so this should be fun!
Professional
Stable employment is only good for me so long as I’m challenged and growing. That was definitely the case this year.
- Building a Great Team
One of my major challenges in 2015 was to turn-around and build up a really great team that was struggling when I joined the company in 2014. There was a lot of turn-over in the team at the end of the year, and a big point for me was to dramatically reduce that turn-over in 2015. Since January, only one person has left, as they wanted to change careers, and we’ve added three terrific new colleagues. I could write pages on the dramatic turn-around we achieved and the improvements we made. I’m incredibly proud of my team and they work they’re doing. - Learning to Code (Finally)
This was a bit born out of necessity. We were short-staffed on developers for a lot of 2015, but we still needed to solve problems and get products out the door. So I had to roll my sleeves up and start teaching myself some basic coding. I’ve put together several self-service tools and automation scripts to help out a few teams this year. While I definitely couldn’t even qualify for a Jr. Programmer role yet, I’m able to hack together simple tools that solve real problems, so that’s a HUGE achievement for me. - Helping Shape & Improve the Company
This ends up largely being a result of my drive to “fix” things that make my job difficult, but also coincidentally help out a lot of other people too. This year I introduced multiple tools and processes that have helped the company as a whole work better. Electronic contracts, an Applicant Tracking System, a product catalog management tool and a helpdesk system. Each of these started because I was having trouble managing paper contracts, or hiring people, or finding out what games we had in our catalog, but also ended up being problems others had too. - Going Indefinite Contract
This is a huge deal for expats in the Netherlands. I now have a contract with no pre-set end-date, which means my new residence permit will be for 5 years. This removes a LOT of the annual “will we still be here?” stress we’ve had. While this isn’t a guarantee of work (I can still be laid off at any point), it’s an additional bit of security that lets us settle in a bit more than we already had.
Personal
Like I said earlier, this year really feels like I’m living the life I want. The Netherlands definitely feels like home now, I’m challenged professionally, and generally we’ve been experiencing a lot of small, great moments. One of my greatest pleasures the last year and a half has been to spend time with my best friend’s daughter and see her grow from a 3-day-old-infant into now a toddler who’s starting to really turn into a person I can communicate with. That alone has been a long series of tiny, hilarious moments that I’m so glad I was able to be present for.
While I would have liked a bit more varied travel, that was a compromise we knew we’d be making this year, and the trips we did take were good ones.
2016
So what does 2016 have in store for us? Really hard to say. Maybe a bit more variety in travel, maybe we buy some nicer furniture and settle more into our home here. I honestly haven’t given the new year a whole lot of thought. But for the first time in a really long time, I’m really OK just waiting to see what comes our way.
So here’s to the end of a good year, and the hopeful start to the new one.