Performance Appraisal

Well, I’ve done everything else, and seeing as it’s the last day of the year, I suppose that its time to look back at my personal 2004.

Helluva year for me. I finally crawled out from under the soul-crushing rock of my previous job to claw back a sliver of dignity with a new job. Hugely tedious, but at least the stench of self-loathing no longer sticks to me.

I passed my driving test, after almost fifteen years of intermittent, half-arsed attempts to get round to it.

I gained a phenomenal little girl. (Surely THE highlight of my year).

This blog started. (Surely THE highlight of your year).

After a 2003 where not a single word of mine was published out there in the world, 2004 gave me a handful of magazine articles, a new role as the Film Editor for a widely read music website, and, my professional highlight to date, a really very excellent book was published with lots of wise and whirling words straight from my keyboard. Particularly proud of that one. Kudos to me.

On top of that, my healthily-polluted ideaspace kept spitting out ideas for comic books and movie scripts that I have diligently scrawled out with an eye on completion in 2005. The long-mooted Film Deal may well come off next year.

Personally, 2004 has been happy and successful.

Professionally, after a remarkably fallow 2003 when I lost all the momentum I had built up in the preceding years, 2004 reignited my writing career. Now I just need to keep building on that for 2005. I need more paid writing commissions for next year, I need to consolidate the contacts I’ve made this year, and I just have to keep on becoming a better writer. And I need to write a proper treatment for the Big Movie to get the wheels greased on that project at last. Amongst many, many other things that I can’t think of right now.

Ze clock, she is ticking.