Your 2010 summaries and 2011 hopes, plans and dreams

[quartz]

As per the title. I thought I'd start a thread where people can post a summary of their 2010's and their plans for 2011. I'm serialising mine on Facebook each day this week with a quarter a day followed by my 2011 hopes on the friday, though I'm not sure if I will keep going with it, anyway here are the first two entries.

Quote:The year began much like many have for the last 8 years but having caught a few gigs towards the end of 2009 I was keeing my eye out for gigs to go to this year. I also decided to actually start going along to the 5-a-side football at work this year and also to look into something I had considered learning to do for a while but havent gotten around to it .... learning to fence electric foil.

I also started trying to get back to writing version 9 of Transformer at the Moon (still not complete) and watching an 12 part anime series that I've still can not bring myself to watch the last two episode of as it was that bad.

Work was work, I wasn't really pushing myself or my skills, but I haven't needed to for a while, but there was a lot going on at the board level that was starting to causing ripples around the place. Much more was to come and the improvements that had happened over an odd previous 12 months were going to start going backward pretty soon whilst other things would move forward, but lets not jump the gun.

By the end of Q1 things were pretty good, I felt the happiest I had felt in a few years and was fairly trouble free (other than some problems with my eyes) . I had been to a couple of gigs including Them Crooked Vultures, had started getting into weekly fencing lessons and had got well into Final Fantasy XII and Football Manager 2010 as the main two computer games I was playing. By now I had my summer and autumn gigs booked and was looking forward to the Rage Factor event as I had wanted to see Rage Against the Machine live since the 90s.

On a Transformers front there was all kinds of mess kicking off about fake Lucky Draws and other chrome toys that I was rapidly uncovering the whole 8-10 year history of and causing quiet a stir amoungst many collectors. Jan was also when I was also talking to Derrick J Wyatt about artwork for Auto Assembly 2010. I'd confirmed Derrick's appearance at the end of '09 and I was already really excited that I would get the chance to meet the great man himself in August.

Ah, happy memories ...

Then there was the 2nd quarter

Quote:Welcome back to my round up of 2010. After a pretty relaxing Q1, I forgot to mention that I injured my ankle at the start of the year and the 5-a-side games and fencing meant the injury was taking a pounding and getting worse each week. Well Q2 saw this continue to the point that I was in pain all the time. Eventually I would go to the doctors and have to take 6 weeks off from sport to try to let it heal, but it would be another quarter before it really would be sorted and only after being told there was nothing the docs can do about it and that my flat feet were making it worse.

So on that note what else happened in Q2. Well for a start I was planning my "around Ireland by motorcycle trip" that was booked in for the start of July. I'd never been to Ireland before and was looking forward to seeing the country and spending 6-8 hours aday on two wheels riding. The plan was to stay somewhere different each night and to start in Dublin and work our way around the coast in a clockwise direction over a 7 day period. I'll talk a little about what went down in my Q3 report.

Computer game wise I was still playing some Final Fantasy 12 at the start before moving onto Red Dead Redemption.

I only attended one gig this quarter (that I remember) and that was Rage Factor. It was EPIC. Dave had a ticket but had booked a holiday flying out on that day so he missed it. I met up with Gareth Ardron from work at the event and some other crazy guys (Frank and some others I forget their names) who made the event extremely enjoyable. The atmosphere was electric and I was quite impressed by The Gallows TBH, they put on a good show.

The World Cup hit and I watched pretty much every game in the evenings and on the weekends and some whilst at lunch at work.

The rest of this quarter is some what of a blur TBH. I don't really remember what else I was up to, I know i didn't do a great deal of coding work but I did buy a new scanner so I could start scanning in some magazine back issues that I am still only about 1/5 of the way through. I bought FAR too many.

Work started to get more manic and after the split though the atmosphere changed a bit it still wasn't right.

The Auto Assembly Committee were getting really busy at this stage trying to tie up loose ends and sort out some more cool stuff that no one knew about. I remember reading lots of emails each day which was great to feel a part of something again. I tried to be a little more active on some of the message boards as I was missing the interaction i use to have with fellow fans, but it had been such a long time I didn't really fit in. Looking back, this was probably the time when my sleeping pattern really got mixed up as I was starting to form more plans about things I wanted to do post-Auto Assembly, getting ideas for new projects, I was dealing with some contracts trying to get some artwork commissioned and was starting to look around for additional contract work.

I had decided that since I was really struggling to fit in, make new friends and wasn't really seeing my old friends that much I would throw myself into more work to keep busy. But being me I started taking on way too much.....

So onto Q3

I can't be bothered with FB now so I'll just post it here

Quote:Q3 an Q4 Combined

This was the BIGGY.
First off I started the quarter with a motorcycle trip in Ireland which saw my credit card get cloned, my bike travel around the country with a half flat tyre and me almost come off a couple of times. The trip, however, was fantastic. Though it rained a lot on some days it was a brilliant trip which I have fond memories off and will certainly do it again at somepoint.
After that trip there was the Green Day Wembley Stadium gig which was pretty much the same as last years but being in wembley it was great.
I was also heavily into last minute Auto Assembly organisation at this stage and got in contact with Jim Sorenson and Bill Forster about attending the convention. It was touch and go for both of them, Jim was in a meeting the night before and almost missed the event and Bill, who was broke and stressed, missed out on the Iron Maiden album launch for the event. Both guys were fantastic and well down an absolute storm at Auto Assembly, they fully justify the cost of flying them over and went well above and beyond the call of duty. I can not praise them enough.

Auto Assembly itself came and drew the logistical headache of transporting the figures up for the show. We went up early to make sure we could set-up in time and had problems checking in but the event was, by far, the single greatest Transformers convention I have been to ANYWHERE in the world. The three guest I bought over, Derrick, Jim and Bill were all superb and I feel honoured to have been able to meet them and bring them over to these shores. I've already praised Jim and Bill but Derrick proved he is THE MAN when it comes to staff on any TF show for me. He is a fan first and picked up loads of cool stuff at the event. The committee were running around like headless chickens and Simon once again fought his way through it but he did at least manage to keep smiling longer this year. Thankfully he finally took a break after the event to spend some much needed and deserved time with his family, but the amount of work and effort he puts into these events is amazing to see. I had a great time meeting and chatting to all kinds of people and it reminded me so much of the earlier Transforces and our own pub meets and I found myself with a feeling of joy and belonging that I had not felt for such a long time I had not realised it had gone missing.

So THANK YOU to everyone who attended the event and made it what it was. Stressful it was at times, but it was the happiest I have felt in years.

After the event things would not be the same for me again. Work was turning crazy as one of the other senior devs was ill for 6 weeks so I had his job and mine then the third had to go back to Columbia for a family emergency so I was covering that as well. This got me very overworked, and that tied into the energy I spent in the month prior to AA left me a shattered and pretty much dead person.

Oh I forget before AA I also had a very nice business meeting with a Devil Soundwave about a project he was starting, which i was and still am very interested in, only i have not had the time to look into it which is a shame and something I regret. Sorry Ross.

Anyway September started as August ended at by the middle I simply had enough. I needed a holiday. Ireland was a nice break but that many hours on a bike concentrating was not relaxing. So I decided to book a holiday to Japan ... for the start of October! So in about 3 weeks I had booked a hotel, flights and rail pass and was on my way back to Japan with Moonbug for our second visit.

Japan was AWESOME! I loved it. We travelled a lot more, we spent a lot but man was it worth it. We had not spent much time together in 6 months so it was good to catch up as well. After Japan I came back feeling much better but after another week things changed.

In this same period I had started back working on Transformers At The Moon V9 and also had started work on Transformers-Prime.com so I was coding for a good 12-15 hours a day. I was also not sleeping.

Everyone was back at work but there was a lot of friction around, not just in the department but within the company. This grew and grew and has come to effect me heavily to the point of being very vocal about it in recent weeks which is most unlike me. So where Q3 had a great middle and tough end with a silver lining at the end, Q4 started with a positive trip to Japan and went down hill from their. By the middle of November I was down to about an hours sleep a night, if that. By the end I was properly depressed. Scarily so.

December started and I was still low, people were off work on holidays and two new guys had started who I had to train as well as do my own work and cover for others which meant I was even more busy and frustrated which made me more depressed.

That basically takes us up to Christmas.

Oh Q3 has one gig, Muse and Q4 had three. Motorhead, Weird Al Yankovic and Disturbed (Rockstar: Taste of Chaos tour).

Now I am off work till next year but on call for the next three days. I'm feeling a bit better and am trying to think of the positives for next year, but whether work will finish me off when i go back i dont know as we have been told that there are going to be a lot of changed at the start of the year that we will not like,

So that's 2010. 2011 coming soon