It’s been a funny old year. In December 2018 I left my long time employer. To be honest the ground floor staff are hard working and lovely people to know. Good people make a huge difference in the work place and I do miss them.
2019 was a year of recovery and uncertainty. Previous to leaving work I had a bit of a break down and went onto anti-anxiety meds. In my naivety I assumed I would just get better naturally. Sure not having the pressure of work and being able to cope with the tiredness side effect of my medication has been much easier for the space. That said I have based a huge amount of my self worth and therefore motivation based on my working life. The absence of which I felt a fair bit. I started getting counselling to help with the recovery. I signed up to volunteer in a local charity shop to help get back some of that work fulfilment. These have helped.
I still struggle with self motivation and being my own boss. Another issue, which I think many in the design world have, is an element of impostor syndrome. A large part is me just asking myself ‘what am I for?’. I’ll let you know if I ever find out.
Brexit and it’s effects continue to cloud my personal and professional life. It doesn’t give me a positive outlook on the near future. It would be too easy for me to just blame it for all my struggles I have with finding work. That said I seem to see the same senior or high pressure roles appearing again and again. Anything a little more junior or for a smaller company seems to be pretty rare. I have always done a bit of everything to get things working in the teams or companies I have worked for. For a while the world seemed to specialising, now you need to be a specialist in multiple areas or more of a back-front end developer than front-front end…
So I guess gazing out in to 2020, I wonder what could be ahead and where I fit in the world.