New Years Evolution

Tis the season to be rolly, tra la la la la, la la la la

It's that time of year. Stomachs are swollen and bloated, and gyms are bleeding money as people regretting the season of excess plump down their cash, deciding to get in their best shape and resolving to lose that gut in the new year. A new years resolution, you might call it. 

I have never been one for new years resolutions. My resolve has never been any stronger or weaker in January than the rest of the year so the concept doesn't really ring true with me. And apparently I'm not alone - did you know that 75% of a gyms memberships are sold in the month of January, and the economics of the business are dependent on the fact that most people won't actually use their membership more than 5 times? True story. My point is this - I don't believe that the new year can bring about a revolution. Change, in my mind, must be gradual to be effective, and I am not just talking about the size and shape of your gut here.

That said, I like to take stock and see where I'm at once in a while and I can think of no better time than the present. 2016 is going to be a year of great change for both myself and my family, and it's prudent to reflect on the year that's been to help me plan for the year ahead. 

So another calendar year is in the books. 2015 eh? Fuck I'm old. It was 1998 like a week ago wasn't it? Some years go by and feel relatively uneventful - 2014 was, all things considered, pretty quiet on the western front. But 2015 has seen a lot of change, some major challengs and a bunch of fun, most of it centering around one person. (Hint, she's less than 3 feet tall.) 

(No, not MT. She is marginally more than 3 feet tall).

I'll break 2015 into chunks because my word has it been eventful. The most tangible change has probably been in work. As 2015 rolled in, I was working in Noonan. Resource, the facilities services company I'd worked in for 2 years, had mercifully gone out of business and been taken over by Noonan the prior September, with my switch over happening in November. I could not have been happier about Resource being absorbed because  - and I feel free to speak about the company openly and honestly given it no longer exists - it was a truly horrendous work environment. When I applied for that job the spec was unclear but what was clear was the salary was good and the office was less than a mile from my front door. Ultimately it was massively understaffed, wildly disorganized, and most troublingly the people I was reporting into were completely unprofessional and had no problem being very aggressive and confrontational. It was not uncommon to be asked "What the fuck are you playing at?" or told "just get it fucking sorted" in relation to a project you were working on. Body language and tone of voice are hard to quantify in a blog, but it's key to note that both were strong and aggressive, bordering on intimidating at times. Indeed I am loathe to confrontation myself but at times so bad was it that I had no choice but to firmly and assertively pull certain individuals aside and tell them it was not acceptable to speak to me in that way. Things would change in the short term but never in the long term. The perfect anecdote to give you an idea of the work environment was the lone time I rang in sick. I had been working 15 months and had not missed an hour, much less a day sick. I was genuinely really ill and went to the doctor on the weekend. I was diagnosed with a chest infection and signed off for a week. I rang my manager. 

"Well what the fuck am I supposed to do for staff for the week now Kenny? Someone is going to have to pay for a fucking temp you know. We need to have a serious chat when you get back in". Oh, and he docked my pay for the week. Number of times he asked how I was feeling, before, during or after my illness? 0.

Ultimately I stuck it out because they agreed to accomadate my request for part time hours and it seemed inevitable to me the place would shut and I might get a few quid when it did. 

When I made the switch to Noonan, all initially seemed good. I was offered redundancy but told they had the exact role they wanted me for in mind and that my work hours (830 - 500, Monday, Thursday and Friday) perfectly fitted in with it if I chose to stay. Alas, I should have known better than to trust blindly The role never materialized and instead my first few months were spent doing quite literally anything they could find. Some days it was scanning and indexing. Data entry. Typing word documents. Etc, etc. I was happier than when I was in resource but it didn't strike me as a positive that the very first thing they'd told me was a lie. Also, I'd been due a certain amount of holiday pay accrued in resource when they'd taken over. I asked and asked for info on it - would I get the holiday time itself, or pay in lieu? I was told not to worry, it would be sorted. Again, I took them at their word. Eventually by March they'd found a defined role for me - industrial admin. It was mostly payroll. It could often be extremely tedious work. But it was straight forward and relatively low pressure. So long as everyone got paid on time and correctly, all was well. After the intensity of Carole Nash and Resource, I didn't mind that. Ultimately though, on the whole I was slightly unhappy. It felt like every time I'd be told or promised something, they wouldn't follow through on their word. And the work was easy and low pressure but also tedious.

In April, I got a call from Aly, who had hired me all the way back in 2006 in Carole Nash. I'd spoken with her briefly about a job opportunity that she may have for me a few months prior, but when I hadn't heard from her in a while I thought maybe it wasn't going to materialize. So I was delighted when she suggested we meet for coffee. The job was going to be working back in bike insurance. 

This is where I must be honest about something that I've not often spoken about. Some people know what they want to do in life. MT dressed up as a nurse for Halloween when she was 3. Now she does it every day. I never knew what I wanted to do. But what I did know was that while I struggled with the structure & politics of the company, I had enjoyed working in Carole Nash immensely a lot of the time during the nearly 7 years spent there. Bikers are an odd bunch and having gotten acclimated to their wacky ways and indoctrinated into their culture, I had come to enjoy the job. It could be mundane and repetitive by times - but that's any job. So when things came to a head in CN, while it felt like the right time to move on from the company - I had already been interviewing for jobs when I got the boot - I wasn't ready to move on from the work itself. Given how small an industry the bike insurance one is in this country, it felt like that door had closed on me for good - even more so when I started working part time. And this is the part I didn't much speak of - that bothered me. Like, it REALLY bothered me. For the longest time. It just felt so unfinished. And I can't think of a better word. I had done 7 years in that industry and I wasn't done. So it would bug me. Intermittently, every few months, I'd think about it and get worked up. I am a passionate person and I like to at the very least be interested in what I do. Working in facilities for 2 years almost killed me. Many hours of my life were spent on the phone to managers of various branches of Heatons or Bank Of Ireland who barked down the line about how dirty their branch was because our cleaning staff hadn't shown. Once - just once - I wish I could've told them "You know, I really don't give a fuck" or even just politely asked "Is it really worth getting this worked up over?". Granted I am not as passionate about motorbike insurance as I am about, say, Liverpool, but it keeps me interested. Ergo when I met Aly about going to work for Principal, I was very keen to put something together. I was nervous because given that Principal is a brand new company in this country and I wanted to work part time, I thought that could be a spanner in the works, and I didn't want to get my hopes up. Luckily, Aly had no problems accomadating me and just like that, I was back. 

I'm a firm believer in fate over coincidence, and sure enough just before I was due to hand my notice in to Noonan to join Principal, Noonan informed me they wanted to change my hours and I had the choice to accept them, or take redundancy. In the end, I took redundancy, had a week off and started in Principal. Not bad eh? The first day in the office can only be described as surreal. It had been 2.5 years since I'd done the job, but honestly on my very first phone call, it was like I'd never been away. Happily, it has been as easy and pleasant in the 6 months since. Work is work - there are good days, great days but also days where you just can't seem to get going. But this is the first time in a long time where I've actually liked the company I work for and the environment I work in, which is the biggest positive of all. In my experience, it is very common for a company to sell you on the idea that they are employee friendly - "you scratch our back, we'll scratch yours". Resource had the tag line "investor in people" which couldn't have been further from the truth, while in Carole Nash I was constantly asked to go the extra mile and told that I'd be repaid in kind, which eventually led to a great resentment on my behalf when all those promises went unfulfilled. I am fiercely loyal and that is both an asset and a problem in my working life. It's been an asset because employers have seen me as someone who will multi task and do that bit extra to help out, but it's been my achilles heel because too often I've allowed myself to be exploited. In Principal, I've found that there is a culture that encourages both parties to help the other out when needs be. This year there have been issues that have led to me needing time off to mind Carra. Indeed one day I got a call from creche to tell me Carra was really upset and asking for me, in the middle of the working day. One word with my boss in any of these scenarios, and I've been able to get home and be a Dad. On the flip side, when the office is short staffed and someone needs to cover lunches because someone's off sick, or someone's got to go in late on a Saturday to get a policy set up, I have had no problem going in. They look after me, so I look after them. It seems so extraordinarily simple and yet most businesses are still so hamstrung by structures and procedures that their staff are resentful and speak about the company they work for with disdain. It is a really fantastic thing to go to work every day for a company that you truly want to help develop and grow, working for and with people you like, trust and respect and who treat you the same.

With all that said, for 2016 I am just hoping for the status quo to be maintained. I like the hours I work, I like the work that I do. It's my sincere belief and hope that as a team we can exceed all the targets we've had set for us this year and best of all, I will genuinely take pride in it when we do. 

So where to next? When the year began Carra was 19 months old and just beginning to leave 'babyhood' and become a real little girl. The pics below almost feel like a trick of the mind to me - can it really be only one year ago that she was wheeling around in her pram, or sitting in a highchair? The mere idea seems so ridiculous to me now. In her face and her body size, she looks like a babba then.

So much has changed. I wish that I'd spent more time documenting it. It seems like there is a new milestone, a change of some sort, every couple of months. When she was under 18 months, these were more tangible. The first time she crawled, stood, ate, spoke. This year she has developed mentally more than physically. She is her own little person now. She was always infused with a strong sense of self, right from day one. She's been animated, independent and demonstrative since her lungs kicked in and she let that first big wail out. But now she has all these little character traits. She can be such a tomboy at times. She loves watching Batman and she loves being Batman. About a year ago she started demanding we tie a towel around her neck. "That's my cape like Batman, Dada" she'd tell me. She watches wrestling with me and sometimes seems uninterested. Sometimes. But not when the Undertaker comes on the screen. Then she's transfixed. She likes to go to the park and play football with me too. But at the same time, she's a real little lady. She is obsessed with her "go" dresses. She first learned about dresses watching Frozen or "go" as she learned to call it with her limited dialogue when she was in (after the movie's theme tune "Let It Go". So dresses are GO dresses. She will only wear dresses. Look at any pics of her in the last year. If it's not bedtime, she's wearing a dress. She has a jewellery box and insists on wearing her necklace most days. She has a little handbag and when we go to creche, it has to have jewellery in it. Oh and 'Liddy'. Liddy is the lid off her milk bottles. Liddy is a bizarre comfort blanket of sorts. Liddy goes everywhere. She is fiercely strong willed and knows what she wants. Today we were driving and she told me "Dada you are driving too fast. Slow down. SLOW DOWN RIGHT!?". She has to dress herself and if you try and help her she'll take it off and start again on her own. She is wonderfully good fun. She demands music and insists Mom and Dada dance. And she's soft. She wants to be cuddled and feel loved, but only when she's ready. Her terms, not yours. 

Carra has taken everything in her stride - eating, walking, running, speaking, even teething - nothing has been that much trouble to her. But in November & December she was really challenged when suddenly she was landed in creche. Where previously she was minded by Nana Esther, circumstances suddenly precluded that. We put her into creche. At first, things seemed ok. But once she realized that the pattern was she'd go in and then be stuck there for 9 hours, she revolted. And she got sick. Every kid does when they start going to creche. It was so hard to see how all of this impacted her. So fierce and strong usually, Carra was weak, lacking in energy, mopey, confused, angry and sad. I would drop her to creche and she would roar, kick and scream, fighting so hard to stop me leaving it was not uncommon for her to vomit because she'd become so distressed. Then she would come home and be stuck to her parents. A few weeks after Nana Esther went AWOL, I went to Turkey for a week. After I came back, you could see how strongly she was impacted. Everywhere I went, she would have to go as well. If she woke in the night, she would roar for me to come. She was constantly scared I would go away. I felt tremendously guilty. Obviously circumstances dictate you can't be with your child 24/7 but it doesn't make it any easier to see them so constantly anxious and afraid of you going. You just feel like you've hurt them. Thankfully, after 5 - 6 weeks, in mid - late December, she began to acclimatize to the new setup. She made her first friend - Amelia - and she would tell us stories about her. Her stories are the best and a real sign of how her imagination has bloomed. On Christmas morning, she came into our room. We said to her we would go downstairs. She said that we had to wait 5 seconds because Santa and Rudolph were still down there, and Rudolph was eating his carrot. Moments like those are why when people ask me what my dreams in life were, I can tell them honestly that being a Dad was all I ever aspired to be. The gratification of seeing such joy in someone you helped to bring into the world is something that, and I know this is cliche, you will truly never understand unless you do it yourself. It is the single best feeling I've ever experienced. I am so excited to watch her develop in 2016. We are going to keep her in creche now regardless of what other options we might have because it's good for her development, and there's no sense in the upheaval of taking her out of creche now only to have to put her in again down the line. I am most excited about seeing her finish the journey from baby to little girl. I get excited about the conversations I can have with her when her dialogue gets a little more fleshed out and clearer, although I must admit it makes me sad to think there will come a day when she doesn't speak how she does now. My favourite is how she says the word 'the'. It is always pronounced THEE. "I am going to THEE bed with THEE milk and I will see you in THEE morning Dada'. So proper. I can't wait to see how she mingles with ner new sibling. And it will be wonderful to see her develop friendships thru creche and friends' children. 

When I look at her now compared to a year ago, she's grown so much. I wonder what she'll look like 12 months further down the line!

And finally...there were a bunch of other topics I wanted to tackle, both about the prior year (my health, my weight, my wife, my friends) and the one to come (our home, our baby...the new one!) but I'm running out of steam and need to tackle one key issue before I go: the YEARD. 

What is a yeard you say? A yeard is what it sounds like. A beard you've grown for a year. I stumbled across the concept a few weeks ago, and you know what, it's a bloody good idea. I have always been into my appearance. Now when I use that term, please interpret it correctly. God and my father did not bless me with the finest genetics - I hope I'm not ugly but I'm no bloody oil painting either. What I mean by into my appearance is I am constantly trying new things. I just get bored so easily. A few months back I was irritated by my hair - I had it super long, then trimmed it short with a fringe. I couldn't be bothered with the hassle of it so I buzzed it - 2 all over. I kept doing so for a month or two. And the beard too. Then, I just stopped. And you know what, I don't really want to start again. I've always been so precious about my hair - both on my head and on my face. When I had long hair it was straightened (I've created two kids, with a woman, so I feel like my hetero card is sufficiently stamped to use a hair straightener) and when it was short I'd use product. I was always trimming and neatening my beard or my stubble. But now I need to know. If this was 2000 years ago and I was holed up in some cave, venturing out only to kill food and bring it home to my family, just what would I look like? Well we are all about to find out. Not only am I not shaving or cutting my beard for the year, I am not trimming it either. And I think I'll do the same with my hair. I am going full on caveman. I just need to know what I can grow. And I don't care how stupid or ugly or homeless I look. Because beards kick ass.