My Year Off

My plans have not gone according to plan this year at all. It has been a wonderful exercise in detailed planning and then completely abandonment. I would hate to go and check out my goals that I set so long ago. Then they all seemed to be achievable and even laudable. Now they are still laudable but achievable only in my dreams. In the end I have achieved more than I could have dreamed of but not in the direction that I wanted to go at all.

Funny that the thing I really excelled at was bringing in an income and yet this is the one thing I did not want to do this year! And the rest of the world is in financial despair...

Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining, so let me lay it all out here:

· I left the corporate rat race to collect my thoughts and try and build a life that was outside the pursuit for money, power and prestige. I gave myself a year to save the world, connect with my family again, do good and find my path in life. Instead I ended up with half a year off and then four months of consulting night and day away from my family in a foreign country. I reneged on most of my newly acquired social commitments to do good. A clear aim was for a year of money free bliss and ended up with a lucrative income and a fledgling consultancy.
· I started to write a book on money, power and prestige as the forces that could dominate one’s life and the resulting tensions with other aspects of life, mainly family and values. I wrote 14 chapters which after many revisions still needed further work. I only have seven chapters to go but now they all lie on the shelf gathering dust. It should have been a slam dunk to have this book finished, instead I just have a collection of rantings of the mad man.
· My family and I have connected on a different level. This even though I have spent much of four months away. I did learn that I have a hard time being away from my family and that my family needs me. It is fantastic to be needed! This aspect of my year has far exceeded expectations.
· My lifestyle has been out of this world. It has included some surfing although not nearly as much as I would have liked. The main thing about my lifestyle is that I have been able to choose how I wanted to spend my time. There is heaps of freedom in that choice and I have thoroughly enjoyed that.
· I have learnt so much. I thought that I had a good handle on life and business but I have been humbled by how much I did not know I did not know. Starting to fill those gaps has been a voyage of new discoveries. I cannot believe that learning could be such a thrill!
· From a personal point of view, I have grown in huge leaps and bounds. I have become far calmer, more introspective and have a very different point of view to the old me. I feel that I am a far better person for the experience.
It is interesting that I started to write my book with the perspective of this just wounded corporate animal that managed to crawl away from a terrible killing ground. As a result, my writing was filled with some grandiose ideas. The upside of the consulting work is that it has helped me understand how to tie those ideas into reality. I cannot wait to get stuck into my writing again, and yet there seems to be some more work out there for my consultancy. It looks like I will need to leave the dust on the book and the right time will present itself in time to come. This book will be written! I still have a story to tell.....

All in all, my year has not been what I wanted a year ago. On so many levels it has been way better, on other levels I have failed dismally. I have learnt so much though and hopefully armed with this knowledge, I will be able to make the difference that I crave to make.

I will change the world!