I don't generally start the year with any resolutions as my thoughts about them have always been that if you don't try, then you can't fail. This thought process obviously can be flipped round and it is then that you realise that if you aren't trying you cannot succeed either.
From the sounds of it, you'd be expecting me to say that for this coming year I'm going to have a long and decisive list of life changing resolutions, well I'm sorry to say that I haven't. I do, however have a list of things I want to achieve and a list of things that I want to change in 2007.
One of them is to write more stuff, so until I start writing that book that I want to, I'm gonna update this place more, so I thought I'd begin by writing a review of my 2006.
2006 has been a crazy year in all, I've been on a rollercoaster these past 365 days and the things that I've done and the people that I've spent them with, will stay with me for a lifetime.
I started the year, halfway through the 4th and final year of my degree. I was just starting my dissertation and had a fun trip to Edinburgh to look forward to. the trip to Edinburgh was amazing and I would love to live there for a summer, I can't imagine it being too fun in the winter for anything more than three days.
Obivously below are some of my photos from that trip. (Click through to see a full size version on flickr)
After the Edinburgh trip, the first few months of the year blended into one another amongst the constant uni work and various regular occurences in my life, such as skateboarding, university and hanging out with my girlfriend, Rhiannon. I made certain choices at this point that I wasn't fully ready to make and being the stubborn arsehole that I am, refused to back down from. These decisions have pretty much shaped the rest of my year and continue to shape the life I'm leading now. This isn't really the place to go into this, but I need to mention them as they forced me to take a different road to the one I could have taken. There's an old saying that goes something like "can't see the wood for the trees", I understand this more than I ever thought possible. I did see Morrissey again though and touched him as I was front row... Anyway, enough about that, it happened, other stuff did happen in my life, so thats what I shall talk about. Firstly I got my degree. Well, after one retake at least. I am the proud owner of a sandwich degree in Computing from Sheffield Hallam University. I'm quite proud of this achievement even though I think that had I been a bit more disciplined and far less complacent then I would have done a lot better. I did however discover that on some search engine somewhere this website ranks 3rd for the search term "failed my degree". That's the proudest achievement!
Secondly, I really started to enjoy skateboarding again, kind of like when I first started. This is solely because of the amazing scene in Sheffield I reckon. Everyones seems to actually enjoy skateboarding in that fair city and the heaps of amazing local skaters certainly makes for some interesting sessions at one of the four skateparks or many street spots that the place offers.
Obviously a big part of enjoying skateboarding has and always will be the people that you skate with. I was lucky enough to be able to skate with my good friends Will, Arthur, Matt, Muff, James and Huw on a regular basis. Thanks for being fun and putting up with my bad rendition of skateboarding! Oh and no thanks to stinking assholes who steal tricks (No, not you Dave). So anyway, the jist of this is skateboarding has been very nice to me in 2006, hell I even managed to get some free boards and other bits and pieces, I'm lucky, not good at skating though! here's to 2007 being just as good.
Thirdly and almost finally, as this is turning into a far longer post than I wanted, is work. When I'd started the year I was doing various freelance bits and pieces as a result of the work I did for Caught in the Crossfire. I managed to juggle this work with University stuff fairly easily and ended up doing some interesting work for some interesting people that you may of heard of. I was also given the honour of going back to work at the Royal Garden Hotel, where I did my placement year for 5 weeks to cover whilst they had some staffing issues in the IT department. The bonus being this time that I wasn't staying the staff accommodation, but in the Hotel itself due to Rhiannon being with me. I never dreamt in a million years that I'd spend 5 weeks a la Alan Partridge living in a prestigious five star hotel (not a Travelodge) where I'd bump into the likes of Lemmy from Motorhead and James Blunt. This was fun whilst it lasted, but it was soon back to reality and Sheffield, where I continued to work freelance on various websites and projects.
I stayed in Sheffield until November, when in the space of three weeks, I planned and executed a typical hair brain scheme of mine which has resulted in me sitting here typing this crap in the State Library of Victoria. Now for those of you not familiar with Australia, this is the main library in the centre of Melbourne. My new home for the next 12 months, aka 2007. More on that soon.