We’re Still Here…

I’m sitting here in the, roughly, 37° heat in Augusta looking back on a year that’s pretty much had it all. It’s had some really high highs, some very low lows and the things in between that occur as a year passes you by.

The year started out with Cat and I frantically travelling all over the UK to make sure we saw everyone we wanted to before we moved to Australia in February. Unfortunately one of those visits wasn’t meant to be as a close family friend passed away the night before I was planning on visiting her. Equally unfortunate was the fact that I would also miss the funeral and, while I know she wouldn’t have wanted me to adjust any plans I’d made, I still wish I could’ve been there. Our move continued as planned and I must say, given that we’ve moved again recently, I was glad that we’d hired someone to pack up our house for us!

We arrived in Sydney the day before Valentines and took in few sights before deciding we both really wanted to get to Canberra. So rather than staying the extra day we’d planned we headed off down the highway to the city we would soon be calling home. I found a football club to join and Cat set about finding dance classes. The search for a job proved much tougher than I thought as many jobs in Canberra are federal based and as such require security clearance and, in my case, citizenship. In the end though I’ve found a job in a company that has a really good office vibe and, while there’s been the usual ups and downs, I’m really grateful to be working there.

The other thing that has happened this year has been my own battle with depression. Moving out here was, I’ll admit, much more difficult than I thought and coupled with a few outside factors it made settling here, a times, challenging. Thankfully I’ve had awesome support not just from my wife and family but from friends to co-workers too. I’m eternally grateful for their support and hope they know just how important their support over the last 10 months have been.

So there we go; that was 2012 in rather brief nutshell. There’s a heck of a lot more to it but I’d rather not drone on forever. I’m hopeful of a fantastic 2013 not only because, for the first time ever, we own our own home but because I’m finally starting to settle down. There’s still work to be done but the task seems much less daunting than it did when I hit my lowest earlier this year. So here’s to 2013… bring it on!