Good Day to Take Stock

It’s New Year’s Day. I hope all of you had a safe, fun celebration last night and I’m betting more than a few of you have already given up on your resolutions. 😉

Given that this marks the start of a new year, it occurs to me that it’s also a good day to take stock. It’s a good day to look back at where you were at this point last year, and how much you’ve grown, healed, or simply improved yourself since then.I’m betting that many of you, who may be struggling with your own journey toward healing, can still manage to look back and see improvement. That should encourage you to continue, and next year when you again look back on where you started the year, you will see more improvement and personal growth.

For myself, 2008 wasn’t exactly the year I expected. We were presented with some opportunities we hadn’t seen coming, that changed some of our plans, but the overall personal improvement goals, I think, have seen some definite imrpovement. As always, I wanted to do some more networking, develop some new friendships, give more of my time toward meeting and connecting with new people and generally learn to be more social. Compared to Jan 1 of 2008, I’ve had the opportunity to speak at an Ignite event, meet a large number of new folks online through Twitter and other tools, and can point to at least 2 new friendships that have developed in the last year and already mean a lot to me. I’ve leveraged Facebook to reconnect with friends from elementary school and some of my own somewhat distant relatives whom I hadn’t seen in years. I started an online network for survivors of child abuse and their significant others just a few weeks ago and have already seen so much of the vision I had for that start to take hold.

My professional life and home life have continued to be important parts of my life, and even though I’ve managed to put more efforts into other areas, I’ve not taken either for granted during this time, They are the core of everything. I’m not nearly as succesful without the support of my wife, and of course, we all need to work and support ourselves financially. In this economy, that means working hard and improving your skills at all times, in order to prove your worth to your employers!

Overall, I can say it’s been a pretty good year! I see the affects of my efforts, and I’ve enjoyed the opportunities that have been presented to me. I wonder what sorts of opportunities await, and what sort of things I’ll be able to point to as highlights of 2009? I hope you have many of your own!