2009 was a funny year. I started it with a trip to South America, returning to a job I’d held for a year and was starting to feel settled with. I had grand plans for the year, for myself, my home, and my career. And at the end of the year I can honestly say I achieved absolutely none of these.

Its not necessarily a negative thing – I did some absolutely great things in 2009, its just they weren’t the things on my list. I spoke at a number of conferences and other events, and finally started to feel like I had something to say! The highlights were presenting at tek (because I finally started to feel competent at conference speaking), and PHPNW – where its my home conference which I organise and I knew exactly the session I wanted to bring. I wrote it, brought it, and the session was really well-received. I am definitely not finished with speaking nerves, but I know that if I can get up there and be properly prepared – I have something to give to my audience. Already I’m lined up for quite a few speaking events in 2010 and I’m almost more excited than nervous (almost). Everyone told me the nerves would get better with time – they just omitted to tell me how much time.

In 2008 I was surprised to find that I had written 195 blog posts in a year. I did many more interesting things in 2009 and basically worked a lot more, so I knew I’d be blogging less. This is the 119th post of the year though so actually I did pretty well, all things considered. I’m pleased that I’ve managed to keep writing even through the busy times of the year. I usually post a screenshot of my stats but they’re not that interesting this year to be honest, they’re holding fairly steady and since I don’t track who reads my feeds, it would only be a guess anyway. The blog was mostly a replacement for me remembering things – and it hasn’t changed a lot in the 4 years I’ve had it really!

One thing that I will mention which turned into a bit of a feature this year was that I actually started taking photos of things other than knitting! I think it started with our trip to Peru in January, and also the experience of having my own camera, with nobody else but me to see the results. I’m taking more photos than ever and just replaced my little camera so that’s pretty exciting – my photos are on flickr if you’re interested.

All in all, 2009 was the year that didn’t go to plan – I’m mostly happy about the net result and I think perhaps it was time for me to get a reminder that a master plan isn’t always a good thing. So I’m going with the flow for 2010 and wondering what the coming year has in store; at work and in my wider technical activities I know I’m going to be very very busy and this sadly means I’m stepping away from some of the activities and committments that I’ve enjoyed until now. Above everything else I am hoping that 2010 holds success and good health for us all!