2009 has absolutely flown by.
The highlight of the year was, without doubt, the birth of our second child Matilda (Tilly for short) in February. At the time of writing she’s close to walking and is into everything. She is a cheerful bundle of joy (OK, you can put the sick bag down now).
Abigail started at High School this Autumn and, thus far, has made some great strides in becoming a young adult and also with enjoying the school experience.
Emma enjoyed maternity leave (who wouldn’t enjoy nearly half a year off to spend with baby) and started in a new role as an R&D Tax Specialist. She’s done a great job with kids, house and putting up with me etc.
Work-wise, I’ve spent most of the year working on a contract for CWT, the training arm of the Coventry Chamber of Commerce. I was engaged to promote funded training through the Train to Gain scheme and also give away grants under the Directors Development Programme. If you employ anyone, these schemes are well worth a look. It’s been a good 10 months, I’ve enjoyed the work and am a little sad that it’s come to an end. But there we go, things change.
So I’m going to start the new year with a few website projects to work on while I find another contract. Still working on web projects of my own and completed a new website for networking clubs (appropriately called www.networkingclubs.co.uk).
My training business has been almost dormant since demand dried up over a year ago. Despite my efforts to promote my training and advice services the market has just been flat, dead flat.
Financially things are better. I’ve ended the year debt-free through some very difficult financial management decisions and working hard on not wasting money. My car was written off in October and that settled the only outstanding debt I had. So that’s a very good thing. In fact it’ll be first year since I was a student that I have no debt.
So, overall, 2009 was a reasonably good year.