Obligatory New Year's Post

NOTE: This is the same article I posted on my personal (non-gardening) blog at http://www.brandimills.com/blog

It’s 2012. I am so glad. To put it bluntly, 2011 sucked rocks.

Sure, it could have been worse – things can always get worse – but 2011 was a low point on the line-chart of my life. Winter lasted several weeks longer than usual, our car developed an oil leak, my vegetable garden was a failure and we still did not lose any substantial weight.

But those were the minor disappointments of last year. I also had to deal with the fact that my department supervisor left, leaving our IT department with three people to manage eight stores. And then, we got three new stores so now there’s three people supporting eleven stores. Despite the fact that the amount of work we now have will remain higher even after things settle down, there was no raise and no substantial bonus to compensate for it.

But worst of all was the loss of China. Even if my gardens had been award-worthy, and even if I had gotten a large raise and year-end bonus the death of our beloved pooch would have made it a terrible year.

We’re still feeling her absence – piercingly so – but we have hopes that this next year will start to look up. We’ll be taking the car into the shop to fix the oil leak and heater in the next week or so and we hope to keep things moving positively from here on out. Unfortunately, no one can control the universe and there’s no telling how it’ll all end up. I’m very nervous about the upcoming elections – the level of intelligence of the American public has been disappointing me since 2000. Add to that the fact that people are already freaking out about the 2012 ‘end of the world’ nonsense and you have the makings of a really bad 12 months.

But as for me, personally, I will do my best to keep things moving forward and in a positive direction. Happy New Year to you all and here’s hoping that we all try to do the same.