Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Better late, than never they say.  I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year!

I totally missed the appropriate time for New Year resolutions and forecasts, so I won’t bother much.  But in brief, the year 2009 and was good to me.  I traveled a lot, learned new things, had quite a few interesting challenges at work, met a whole bunch of cool people, pushed quit a bit of paperwork that was lagging behind, got my mother in Cyprus and my dad on the Internet, and more.  It was a bit too difficult and challenging at times, but in a good sense.  In a way that I probably had too much going on for me, rather than not enough.

As for the New Year, I hope it will be as packed with stuff as the previous one.  I hope that I’ll continue my travels and shift a few things at work to get to new challenges and new areas that I wanted to explore for some time now.   Also, I still hope that I will sort out all the paperwork during this year (possible, but knowing me well, I have doubts on how realistic this hope is).  I have quite a bit of plans for this year, personal projects and such – I hope that they will starting turning real as opposite of being just plans.  But, the time will tell and we shall see.

Once again, happy holidays and best wishes to you and your loved ones.

Happy New Year!

I’d like to take this moment and wish everyone a Happy New Year.  Let the new year bring more good to your life and take away the pains and troubles.  Be happy, healthy, wealthy, and have tonnes of fun!

Maybe it’s also a good time to take a brief look back at the year 2008, as well as examine some expectations for the year 2009.

Continue reading Happy New Year!

Christmas season and blog stats

I don’t know exactly how all those online shops do during the Christmas seasons (probably they are blooming), but I can show you what two weeks or so of Christmas and New Year’s holidays can do to one’s blog statistics.  Here is a screenshot of weekly stats for my blog:

Weekly stats - Christmas edition

X-axis shows a few last weeks of 2007 as well as a couple of weeks of 2008.  Y-axis shows the number of visits this blog had for each of those weeks.  A home-made red marker with a word “here” tries to bring your attention to the celebration of Christmas and New Year represented on this graph.

As much as it was expected, that was quite a dive I must say.  Reasons?  I’d say there are only two:

  1. Many people are busy with shopping, celebrations, travels, and other holiday matters.  Mostly off-line.
  2. Many companies closed their offices and that minimized many employees’ access to the Web.

Gladly, things are rushing back to normal.

The year 2007 in review

2007 is almost over, so it’s a good time to take a moment and review how it passed.

First, let’s see how my 2007 expectations turned out to be:

  • Paperwork. I have done a few things about it, but not as much as I have expected.  While bureaucracy can often be blamed, this time it’s not the case.  The lack of progress in this area is totally my fault.  Laziness.
  • Business.  I managed to fly the company into the ground.  It crashed, burned, and disappeared. It’s a bit sad that it didn’t work out, but I’m glad that it happened earlier than later, and I’m glad that I’ve learned so much out of it.  I will surely try it again, but in a different key, and after I take a break to heal the wounds.
  •  Traveling. It didn’t go as good as I expected it to, but I did manage to get out of country.  A few days in Greece with some really cool people.

Secondly, let’s take a look at the highlights of the year (most of these overlap with this recent post):

  • Getting in and out of my own business is surely THE highlight of the year.  Getting another job after that is a nice addition.
  • A few days at Greek Blogger Camp. Unforgettable experience, cool people, inspiration for new ideas, and all that.
  • Lots of family related  happenings.  Maxim starting with his kindergarten, mother visiting us twice this year, grandmother passing away, Maxim getting a little surgery, and some more.

Thirdly, here are my impressions of the year:

  • It was THE LONGEST year of my life.  On several occasions I had doubts that this year will ever end. And even though there are just a few hours left in it, I still don’t feel comfortable enough speaking of it like it’s over.
  • I’ve learned a lot. And I went a long way.  Most of the things I’ve learned were about myself, and many of these weren’t as pleasant as I’d like them to be, but I’m glad I know them know. Heck, I even I learned to deal with some of them to a certain degree.
  • I got more ties with my family. I’ve heard before that the older you become, the more family means to you.  I feel it coming true.  I am as close to my parents as I ever was, and I understood a little bit more of how much my wife and my son mean to me.  More than I thought or felt before.  As weird as it is.
  • I discovered that I have more good people around me than I ever knew or even expected.  I’ve discovered some really great things about people who have been nearby for years, and who I barely noticed.  It’s amazing how much can one see by just looking and hear by just listening.  I should work a bit more on myself to get better at that.

Here is 2007 in one line: it was a great and long year, but I hope it will never happen to me again.

Now, let’s go for the bright side of things – which expectations do I have for the year 2008?  I have plenty:

  • Jobs, projects, business.  I expect some stirring up in this area during 2008.  I am working on some things already, and I have plenty more in mind.
  • Traveling.  I do expect a bit more of moving around.  Some will be family related, some – business related, and some – recreational.
  • Paperwork.  There are some really strong reasons for this to be either completely resolved this year or getting much closer to resolved.
  • Technology.  I have plenty of expectations in this area for the coming year.  Many of this expectations are related to Google, mobile computing, Web, and growing number of people using technology to earn money and make their lives easier (globalization, et al).

Let’s see how it will turn out…

Happy New Year!

Young Santa

Young Santa

I haven’t done any Christmas pictures of Maxim. Neither I have made any pictures of our Christmas tree this year. I thought that it would be difficult to explain to him, when he will grow up, why I haven’t photographed him together with the Christmas tree for his first Christmas and New Year. So I made a couple of pictures, that should help me in the future. I’ll hide the date they were made though…

Album location: /photos/2006/2006-01-21_POTD/