2024

This ain't going to be the most positive of annual review posts, so buckle up buttercup.

At the end of 2023 I was doing all of my work through Prestanda, mostly (and stupidly) for one client. That client had worked with me since 2011 and were part way through a 5 year contract with us, but in December 2023 it started to become obvious that they were looking for a way to move our activity for them in-house. I pushed hard to keep them, and harder on trying to get in new clients, but ultimately the cycle was too long and by the time they formally cancelled their contract on February 29th there was nothing else to replace it. I've had a few times in my life where that much shit has hit the fan, but this time it was different – I've got a kid, a wife and a mortgage to worry about. We had some savings, but not a huge amount, so it was straight into survival mode.

Over the next days and weeks I fired CVs out far and wide, but there was a problem: I'm not formally qualified for anything, especially not at the wages that we've built our lives around. That time was completely soul destroying. Nothing I was doing for Prestanda to find new clients was working, and my CV wasn't getting me in the door anywhere to start a conversation that could lead to a job. I had to believe I was able to add value somewhere, but the market is so tough that just organising the first chat was difficult against hundreds of other applicants with black and white qualifications that they could point at.

Luckily I met a recruiter after a month or so who managed to see past the CV itself and heard some of the things I'd been involved in, and he helped put me in touch with a business looking for a developer. It was a big step down wage wise, but it was something, and they seemed pretty exciting. A few weeks later I had an offer, but there was a new hurdle: they were unable to take me on until a bit of investment came through, which would be "a few days"... Well, it wasn't a few days. I had another offer available, but it was another step down and wasn't as exciting, so I held on. Ultimately, it all came through and I started at Rightly in June after some of the most stressful months of my life.

So that's half the year done, and that must be all the shitness, right? RIGHT? Lol, no. That whole process was also at least partly the reason for a thing that will forever out-shadow an employment shituation that I thought was pretty bad.

Hayley has been talking about divorce for years. The first time she said it to me was in 2017, I think Eleanor was about 6 months old, and Hayley had some big concerns about our marriage and me. I asked her to give me 6 months to try to make things better, and somehow we've managed to pull out another 7 years instead. We've worked incredibly hard on our marriage through that time, including a number of years of counseling, and honestly I think that most of the time it's been pretty damn good. It's been a catalyst to introspection and some changes in myself that I'm proud of. I've had to question everything about myself, tear it all down, and try to build something that's formed of my own beliefs and not the ones I was force fed. It's involved becoming sober, not for the marriage, but tangentially hoping it would help. I've been in love with my wife the entire time, despite it being a lot more Real Life than Disney Movie, but ultimately the D word has never gone away. It's hung over us and come up a lot. The person Hayley sees me as is still the one she wanted to divorce in 2017, and I can't really blame her for that.

It was August time when an argument happened and Hayley brought it up again and, to be honest, I'd run out of ways to keep pushing against it. I'm in a broken kind of place, and if Hayley doesn't want to be with me then it's time I stopped getting in the way of that. So I asked how divorce would look and, despite neither of us really having much of an answer, a few days later we'd started the process. Anyone who's been through it will know that it's a long process that we're only part of the way through, so there's still a lot of unknowns. We stayed living together because that's financially the only way, and Eleanor doesn't know yet so it's been a really draining period of living pretty much as we were while knowing that things have changed forever. The next hurdle is to tell Eleanor in January, and then once it's out in the open we can move forwards as a new version of family. I'm grateful that we've been able to be super amicable so far, and I hope that continues – I really want to look back on this as the best of divorces... whatever that means.

Of course, it's not all been bad. I'm an uncle again, to the wonderful Leo – a proper smiley little thing who is brought into an amazing family that I'm lucky to have close by. Eleanor and I managed a couple of camping trips: one just the two of us in the woods nearby, and one to Brands Hatch for the touring cars with Nanny and Paul. We've got more of that to look forward to in 2025. I also managed to get away to the Lake District for a few days, and my annual trip to Le Mans with the NOMAD group. We also all celebrated my Mum's 60th, taking a few days in a rented house to relax and enjoy time with an awesome woman who doesn't get celebrated nearly enough.

Despite the rocky period professionally, I'm in a positive place there – lots of learning done on the software development side and we've built some stuff that should truly benefit some of the people who are most often forgotten about. Being in the Tech For Good space is good for me, especially right now.

We also had a truly wonderful Christmas time. Christmas Day itself was spent with Hayley's family, and everyone was great. Knowing that it's my last one with them, I really just piled into experiencing it all and soaking it all in. I love that family like I love my own, and it was beautiful to spend it with them. Then we did the same again through Boxing Day with my family, and I hope that Hayley feels similar about that. Most importantly, all the kids were having the time of their lives, and part of that was down to Eleanor not knowing about the divorce so that was a good decision.

It's an interesting day for me today – New Years Eve has historically been my favourite night of the year. Everyone getting trashed, out of their heads and leaving any worry behind at least for a night. But as a sober person it's not like that any year for me now, and this time around I'm also staring at at least the second worst year of my life. There's so much uncertainty around which four walls will be around me and who will call those walls home, and I'm trying super hard to latch onto the positivity and possibility of that uncertainty, but it's not really working.

The good thing is that Eleanor is absolutely determined to stay up to see in the New Year, and if she manages it then it'll probably be the best start to a year I could imagine, so we'll go with that and try to take it through 2025.