2009 and the year that went before

I dislike New Year. I like to remember good things that have happened; things that made me laugh, happy times with friends, moments of success. Thinking back over an entire year encapsulates everything, both good and bad. Whilst it’s the bad things that shape us all just as much – if not moreso – than the good things, I prefer not to take a whole years’ worth of crap all in one go.

New Year always kind of forces that kind of reflection. For the last two years (i.e. beginning of 2007 and 2008) I’ve been really looking forward to the year ahead. 2009 I’m not so keen on, so maybe that had something to do with it.

Despite all of my mutterings though, here I am, reflecting on what a year 2008 was. It certainly had its ups and downs …

I started 2008 with one month left of my contract at HP-CDS. I was heading back to Coventry for some training which – I hoped – would kick my career up onto the next rung of the ladder and get me into Cardiff, the closest city to where I currently live and the one I’d like to live in. I turned down a few options at HP-CDS in order to leave, but I felt that I had learnt a good amount and contributed well to the company, and that it was time to move on.

The training was mostly good. I spent all my additional savings I’d accrued whilst working at HP-CDS in order to do it, but got a lot of information and a lot of learning resources into the bargain.
Almost in a carbon-copy of 2007, I got a call from an agency before I finished the training and was offered a contract role at the Welsh Assembly Government with Siemens IT Services (oddly not Fujitsu-Siemens this time). I finished the training, and took up a 5 week contract. It was advertised as 6 months at first, then 3, then ended up being 5 weeks. Cheeky of the agency, but it was well-paid work so I can’t complain.

During this time, somebody back at HP-CDS decided they wanted me back. Cue a call from Proveya Ltd whilst I’m with Siemens (actually whilst I was standing in line at Subway, but that’s by-the-by). I negotiated a rate as high as they would go (£5 per hour more than I was on before) and once I’d finished at Cardiff, I was back off to the Southern Counties of England after a short week’s break, just 3 months after I’d left.

Things had changed in 3 months. The system that myself and just a handful of others had been supporting was becoming de rigeur across the whole business, and I found myself more and more dealing with the antiquated older system that I’d not even touched when I was there before.

To be brutally honest, my second go around was nowhere near as fulfilling, and I don’t mind saying that (and have done on several occasions). The work was either boring or impossible (requiring somebody with specialist knowledge of a product to step in and effect a fix after I’d spent a week trying to figure it out on my own/with others) and almost always totally irrelevant to the outside world. Whilst other organisations were romping away with a tried and tested Windows XP/Server 2003 infrastructure, here I was muddling away with a bunch of NT4 shite and proprietary software that most people had never heard of.
It was particularly disappointing to see that after the work that myself and another colleague had put in, new opportunities were not even offered to us, instead taken up by somebody entirely new coming to work with us.

Regardless, all experience is good experience, and the money was good. The people were good too. I’ve been at the company long enough now to make some good friends there, which does help the crappier days get by!

Speaking of friends and outside of work, I saw one of my best friends finally achieve his goal and head off to stretch his considerable talent at a university down in the South, and I also saw another of my best – and in fact my longest lasting – friends come back from Durham to live much closer once more!! We set about making a weekly arrangement whereby we’d go to the cinema each Wednesday to see whatever was on. It was nice, to have something to break the week up and pull my mind away from work and the interminable commute, or whatever else was on it at the time.

I also finally realised my dream of owning a car that I could be truly proud of. In 2007 I swapped my Ford Ka3 for my parents Renault Laguna. This year, I bought myself a 2006 BMW 320Cd. It’s truly a great car. It looks fantastic, drives wonderfully, and gets better economy than the Laguna. What more could a young, car-loving commuter ask for?
The monthly repayments are kinda high, but I borrowed money from my parents at a set interest rate and I hate debt, so I’m trying to pay that back as quickly as possible.

Skipping across to 2008 money, I invoiced more money this year than I have ever done before, which marks off my 2008 goal of “Earn more money”. Note that I say invoiced, because to date, I’ve still not been paid for 7 weeks, which works out somewhere in the region of £4,000.

The aforementioned Proveya Ltd went into liquidation, along with their double-dealing bastard of a manager, leaving myself and many other contractors up a certain creek without a certain instrument. We’re still trying to reclaim the money.

As we all know, in the final quarter of the year the bottom fell out of the economy and the shit really did hit the industrial-sized fan.
Just before Christmas, I was informed that the position I held was to become a permanent role. Which basically means, either I take the position (a salaried position, and what I’m guessing will be an effective ~40% pay cut) or leave when they find somebody else to take that place.

I hate being forced into a decision, but that’s what I have to decide on when I go back next week. If the offer is too low, I simply cannot afford to continue there. If the offer is right, then I’ll be upping sticks and moving to the area, and – unless the company is generous – scraping along. Unfortunately I made the error of predicating my standing orders on being in contracted employment for the forseeable future, which means I have a large amount going out each month. Easily covered as a contractor. Not so easily once on a lower salary.

There is one thing keeping me at the company which I can’t discuss here, which would do wonders for my future prospects, so it’s in my interest to try and achieve that.

I suppose we’ll see.

So, 2008/2009.

I technically made more money than I ever have, yet end the year with less than this time last year, and head into an economically uncertain 2009 with either a massive pay cut, or impending unemployment!

I’ve made some good new friends, but by the end of February will have lost the one closest (and probably most important) to me to the wilds of South Korea, and if I’m out of HP-CDS, those new ones will be elsewhere too.

My career is pretty much stagnant. I’ve not pushed myself forward in what I learn, primarily because the opportunity to do anything of interest and/or in relation to what I learned in Coventry is simply non-existant unless I move to another company, as far as I can see (and in spite of all the pie-in-the-sky half-promises made at the company).

As for my own personal goals .. fitness, socially, etc., it’s been as underwhelming as 2007 was. I won’t even bother with excuses this time, I’m simply not performing as well as I should.

All in all, a pretty mixed bag. Plenty of good, but also plenty of bad to balance it out. 2008 sped by like a blur, and I think that was mainly because it was just so damn uninteresting.

Here’s to 2009, and lighting a fire under my arse.