Thirty-seven didn’t turn out to be the year I expected it to be, in some ways that was good and in some ways that was very much not good.

Leading off with the bad because it really felt like a dark cloud over the year, work drove me to some dark places. For me, I try not to make work anything more than a means to a paycheck. I do my 9-5 and try to leave it at that because that is all I’m being paid for. Since I work in software and government services, there is spillover because our services need to be available and working, but even so I do what I can to separate work from everything else.

If you recall, right before my daughter was born I started a new role as a Director of Project Management. That was just about three years ago now and I think these updates since then have been far from glowing. I started that role and then a week later went on paternity leave. I came back after a month for two months and then took two more months off for the remainder of my paternity leave. Starts and stops like that make it hard to get on-boarded to the role and I really think people forgot that I wasn’t really told what to do or what was expected of me. Maybe, as a director, I was just supposed to figure it out on my own. Who know.

The summer of last year, I was on the verge of a full blown panic attack because of my work load. I took that to my boss and she said she’d take things off my plate. Turns out, I misunderstood and that means she wasn’t taking things off my plate and I was still expected to do all of those things. Fast forward to early this year, I was getting weighed down by work again and it was compounded by the fact that I couldn’t get answers from the other directors on anything. I felt like I was just being ignored. This added to the pressure of my workload because I couldn’t even accomplish simple things. I brought this up with my boss again, she asked for examples, so I came back with examples and she told me that isn’t what she meant.

Gradually, throughout this time one of my projects fell further and further behind to the point that our corporate accountants started taking notice and putting pressure on to complete the project. I oversaw the team that was working on the project. I know that a large portion of the delay was the client constantly changing their mind and dragging on every thing. But, as the one overseeing the project, it fell on me to put pressure on the team to deliver. That pressure turned into increased involvement and roughly 25% of my week spent in meetings for the one project. It still didn’t get better. What made it worse was that my boss would give direction in one meeting, I’d write it down and follow through on it and then in the next meeting I’d find out that I wrote it down all wrong and everything was wrong.

This pattern continued month after month and increased in this unbearable weight on me. Finally, it was clear my boss had no faith in my ability to do anything and started micromanaging me and documenting everything I was doing wrong in emails and I saw the writing on the wall. I started looking for other jobs. My wife watched this unfold over the year and she increasingly encouraged me to quit on the spot. She told me I was rarely myself after work. She knew the best thing for me was to get away. I figured, if I’m getting out of this place I might as well make sure my boss takes a hit too. I went to HR with all of my complaints about her. And you know what? HR stepped up. HR moved fast to find me a new role doing what I actually enjoyed. They ‘wanted to keep good people around’. I’m still in the same office, I’m still doing some of what I did before, but now I have a different boss and I actually feel good at the end of the day. It’s been two months in this lower position, but I feel like my old self again.

I’m extremely fortunate to have a wife who sees the signs and knows how to step up and get me to do the right thing. I don’t know where I’d be now if I was still in that old role. What made me stay in that old role so long was the money. Plain and simple I was afraid to lose the income we had grown accustomed to. And I did lose a significant chunk of salary and bonus but it was money well spent on happiness.

One of the things that kept me going this year was my photography and photography-related projects. Some time early in the year I got it in my head that I wanted to design and build my own camera. I dusted off my CAD software and my old 3D printer and started designing and printing tests. It was absolutely fun figuring out how to do things with the limited skills that I have. I learned so much about design, engineering, and photography in the process. After a few months, I had a fully 3D-printed camera that could shoot 6×6 photos on 120 film. I designed the camera body, the shutter mechanism and an aperture system to get the camera to work. I took it out for some photos, and they were absolutely terrible! They were out of focus, shaky and over exposed.

That did not deter me, but I set that camera project aside for the time being because while I was working on it I also discovered panoramic photography. Specifically, the 6×17 format and the amazing and amazingly expensive cameras that produce the negatives. These cameras start around $800 and go up to several thousand dollars. This was money I didn’t have to spend on yet another camera. So, I looked back at CAD and my 3D printer and told myself I could do it for cheaper. I just needed to build off of what already existed and everything I learned about making a camera with the first one.

For this one, I decided to attach it to the back of my large-format monorail camera which usually shoots 4″x5″ negatives. It gave me a starting point as all I really needed to design was a way to hold the film and get the right frame size. Since many large format cameras have something called an international back with the same specifications, I figured if it was good enough I could maybe make these available to other people.

Months more of designing, printing, testing, and repeating I had a prototype to test. I did, and the photos came out terribly! But I was convinced I could make it work because someone else had so I persevered. Slowly, my prototypes got better and better and I refined my design and my modelling skills drastically until finally, last month, I got one successful photo out of a roll of four. At that point, I knew I had cracked it. I figured out the fixes I needed to make for the reasons the other three photos failed and implemented those changes.

That one photo I posted online and it got some attention. People said they wanted to see what I had made. So I posted that online and people were positive and supportive of my work. Some said they wanted the files for themselves. Other asked if I would make one for them. It felt so, so good to have poured myself into this project to keep me sane during a really bad year at work and people wanted a bit of what I made for themselves. I’ve since started a small shop selling the print files and the assembled product for those who want to dip their toes into panoramic film images.

While work and this project took up a lot of my time, I also had a family to look after. We did have a sad time mid-year with the passing of my grandfather. But since he was 91 years old, his passing didn’t come as a surprise or with too much sadness. I have pieces of my grandpa’s house to keep him in my memory and carry on his legacy.

My daughter is on the verge of turning three in a few weeks and this past year has been one of the the most fun years of being a dad so far. She is just so silly, and smart, and full of her own personality. She reads books for hours and while she tries not to admit it often, she has so many of them memorized and can “read” them by herself. My favorite thing she’s done lately is starting to ask what new words mean so she can better understand her stories. It feels like my two years in Konotop as a native English speaker is coming in handy to help her learn and grow.

We also went through potty training this year. It started off so, so slow. The potty was around but she only saw it as a means to get more books read before bedtime. Then, one night she was up at 2:00 AM and she wanted to rock in the rocking chair. Out of the blue, she said, “I want to sit on the potty.” Almost instantly, she peed. I was thrilled and couldn’t wait to tell my wife. While I thought that was the beginning of potty training, it was just a fluke and we didn’t make much progress for a few more months. Daycare moved her into a room with a potty and then things started moving much faster having two fronts working to train her. We have only had a couple of accidents so far, she’s been an absolute champ. Also, the first time she pooped in the potty, we went to flush it down the toilet and it clogged the toilet. It took a lot of plunging to get that one free.

My wife really was my rock this year, supporting me through everything at work. In a lot of ways, I really feel like she went above and beyond what I expect of her and I’m forever grateful to have such a supportive and mature partnership with her. I feel bad, however, because this year just hit so hard that we were both in some level of crisis mode that we rarely found time for just us. We will rectify that next year as we celebrate our tenth anniversary abroad.

Some other great things happened this year.

• We finally spent a weekend up at my best friend’s cabin and it was absolutely peaceful. He and his wife found a perfect place on a small lake (my daughter called it a pond) that is just secluded and quiet. Speaking of my best friend, he and I started meeting monthly for breakfast mid-way between our homes so we can catch up. I think it’s been great for both of us.
• I took a work trip to Provo, UT in June. Aside from an extremely stressful interaction with the TSA on my return trip that almost lost me my beloved Hasselblad, it was a great trip and I got to experience some Utah mountains. I also ran a 5k in the mountains and I made great time.
• Speaking of running, I put my wife through another training season but instead of running a marathon I only ran a half. It drastically cut back on the time I needed to dedicate to training. My marathons had been decreasing in time each year and it was increasing in frustration. I knew I could run a half-marathon. Just a couple of weeks ago, I completed it with a time of 1:42:29. I am positively pleased with that since I averaged 7:50/mile for thirteen miles. In my world, I was flying.
• I also put my wife through another season of summer softball on Thursday nights. We had our winning-est season since I joined the team six years ago and we won four of our ten games. I used softball as a reason to ride my motorcycle in the summer nights. On the night of the final game, my ride was far more eventful than I’ve had before while finally realizing a dream I’ve had since I was 12 years old. I pulled up to a stoplight to turn onto the beltline and I head voice behind me. I looked over my shoulder and there was a woman leaning out of the passenger window and she informed me that it was her birthday. I wished her a happy birthday and drove off as the light had changed. Then, half a mile down the beltline, I look over my shoulder again and see the car coming up to me and a woman is climbing up out of the sunroof. She flashed me as they drove by. Twelve year old me would be so happy to know that some day, he would be flashed by some random person.

To say it has been a year would make it feel like any other year. This one was hard in ways I hadn’t experienced before and it was great in ways I hadn’t experienced before. I’m looking forward to putting distance between some parts of this year and continuing some of the story lines from this year. I suppose, I’ll see you a year from now.