One of the people that I follow on twitter, @briguyblock, wanted to talk about his year – the good, the bad and the crazy. But, has not fully immersed himself in the world of blogging and asked for a bit of help. Since I believe wholly in the creativity of the individual, I couldn’t say no. Plus, his story is worth telling. So, Happy New Year Brian – and here’s his story:
I won’t give you my life story, but I started out the year at the bottom of the work totem pole, as a boyfriend, a social media enthusiast and a grandson.
Going in chronological order, I began the year by proposing to my girlfriend. Later that night we were officially engaged. Facebook said so. We spend the next several months planning the wedding which would take place almost two years from the engagement. It was a long engagement, but a good way to keep someone close.
Since then and throughout the year my family was blessed with five new little cousins. All were chubby with 50 toes and 50 fingers.
I also spent this time to try and build myself in the social media community. Meeting great people and mixing with other like-minded professionals was addicting.
This had carried me through most of the year till August. Then things went sour.
My great uncle passed away. He had been sick for a while, but it was still a major shock that knocked our family down hard. He was loved so much. There’s a short list of men in my life who I feel everyone can learn something from to live a better life. He was one of them.
My fiance left me in late September. I had been searching for her birthday gift the last night she asked to meet . She had some personal reasons for not being able to continue on with me. It was definitely a mistake, but unfortunately it was a necessary step on her part.
In October, I was finally promoted to Account Executive. That was great. This gave me a stronger direction for my career as a social media promoter and PR professional. In fact other people had noticed me too and asked me to step up to take part in greater social media activities. This helped some to get me out of a depression I had been in, but not for long.
In November, I was asked to take care of an event that had been planned three weeks later than it should have and allowed me that same amount of time to put it together. Throwing all disregard into the wind for how I usually like to treat projects and the people who I work with outside of the company, I began pulling strings and my hair to get this project accomplished. It was one of those 60 hour a week, constant pressure from the boss projects that take up your time and make you late for everything in your life.
The day before the event, my mom called me to tell me my grandfather had passed away. He is one of other men on the short list I mentioned earlier. I can’t begin to tell you who he was and what he did that made him special, suffice it to say that a sanctuary that probably held around 600 people was filled to standing room only. He was survived by 8 children (including spouses), 15 grandchildren, 5 great grandchildren and one loving wife.
We all have bad years and good years. This has been both and one too important to let it just be a passing 365 days that happened. I’ll keep this one close to me.
Believe it or not, that was the short version of my year. I might have been able to summarize it better had I simply said that, “in 2008, I learned the difference between a toast and a drink, a pink-ribbon scar and a wound, and the strength to hope for the best and the strength to make it happen.”
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- How to improve your blog and social media strategy
Kirsten
