The final weeknote.
I did pop into the garden office to prepare myself for returning to work on the 2nd. I removed the detritus that always comes with a gift wrapping session. I collected up dozens of post-it notes, pulled out the few items that are still relevant in 2025, and binned the rest.
I tided up, wiped down the whiteboard, hoovered the floor, charged my wireless keyboard and mouse. And I reviewed what’s to come in January.
Reflection: It is lovely to have this environmental “reset” - so calming. Which was needed as there’s so much work still to do. More than can possibly be done in the timescales allowed. And there’s also too much needing done where I’d be the best person to do it - not enough people have built up the domain knowledge yet to take much of it off my hands. So January and February 2025 need to be about loosening the dependence on me - we let it happen so we could meet the December deadline, but Audree doesn’t scale (no matter how many mince pies she eats).
I saw my eldest’s final panto performance. I’m so incredibly proud of her, and pleased I was able to support her to take it on - I reckon this is going to be one of the core memories she‘ll be able to think back on warmly for decades or more.
We had a family day at Battersea Power Station. It was a disaster. Everyone was too scared to ice-skate, too hangry to agree on a place to eat lunch, too cold to enjoy the outdoors, and too broke to be happy browsing the shops. It was a last minute thing - but if we’d really thought about it, we would have done something else. We went for the Christmas food market - which on the day we went consisted of a mulled wine stall and a chimney cake stall, neither of which we chose to patronise.
And on December 31st I was invited to a New Year’s Eve party that was doubling as a birthday party. Reader, it has been more than a decade since I was invited to either of these things - excepting kids parties, of course. It was lots of fun - I met loads of interesting people, got into some great conversations, and learned a little about DJing because the person hosting was a DJ and producer. Grown-up parties are pretty much the same as I remember them - except this crowd kept offering me a “bump”. It took me a second to realise what they were asking - but after declining a few times they stopped asking and let me enjoy my sparkling wine and dancing. Though I’m not any older than the rest of the group, I left at 12.10am (to get my last train home) and they all partied until 10am. I woke on the first day of 2025 refreshed, hydrated, and having met some new and interesting people - so I’m happy.
Reflection: the nice thing about this is that I got to talk to people I’d never normally be in the same circles with (folks in different careers, from different countries, with totally different backgrounds). I got the invite because I saw a friend-of-a-friend liked karaoke and I invited her out to sing with me earlier in December - she’s the DJ, and we had so much fun dueting that she invited me to her NYE birthday party. You never know where small efforts to connect with new people will lead - who you’ll click with, where that’ll lead. That feels like an important reminder for me at the start of 2025.
On that note: I’m going to stop weeknoting now. I’ll have work weeknotes for my colleagues again. But I’m going to spend my (much reduced) free time blogging instead. If you’ve enjoyed my 2024 weeknotes and would like to meet up for a coffee (or for a drink, or for karaoke, or for a walk, anything really), ping me a message and let me know. I want to get to know everyone better - and though you all know me quite well now, I doubt I know all that much about you. And I’d like to change that.
Audree x