2019 – My Year in Review

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t do New Year resolutions. Instead, I like to reflect back on the year I’ve had and see where I’ve made improvements. Despite the spectre of Brexit hanging over my head like a perverse sword, 2019 has been a productive year. I’ve accomplished quite a bit.

My proudest achievement was paying off the mortgage on our house, eight years early. My husband and I buckled down, reduced expenses, and sent the last chunk of money to the mortgage company in August. It’s been a real weight lifted because I know that if my business suffers badly under Brexit, we won’t be made homeless. We’re all sleeping a bit better at night.

2019 was the year I hit a wall with my weight. It was sometime in June that I realised I was miserable with it. Diets have never worked for me, so I decided to try to completely reset the way I eat. While that journey took me to some unexpected places, it was successful. I started out on the Eight Week Blood Sugar Diet and ended up with my being nearly vegan. Going plant-based has been properly life-changing. While I still eat the occasional egg (we keep hens, so I know they’re well cared for), giving up dairy has improved my health in a lot of ways. Continuing to drop weight has been the biggest win for me because I know I can, for the first time in my life, maintain it.

The year did have some low points. We said goodbye to three of our pets. We lost our dog Ted back in February which was a wrench. Then our old tom cat Logan passed away at the age of sixteen in September. Last month, we lost our eldest hen to a rather gruesome rat attack in our henhouse. All of these losses were made more bearable by the arrival of our Romanian rescue dog Trudy in March. I’ve never met an animal more full of love and joy.

My work year was better than I could have hoped. We had our highest productivity ever which presented itself in record turnover and profit. And we did it on a twenty-three-hour work week! We began our shorter work week back in January 2017 with no loss of pay for staff, but the way our financial year falls, we didn’t get a full year of data for this new way of working until May of this year. It’s worked so well and I’m so pleased with it that I’ve decided to experiment with a four-day week. From the first of January 2020, we’ll work Monday through Thursday and have a three-day weekend every week. I’ve been doing this myself for the last six months or so and it’s been life-changing, so I’m happy I can offer the opportunity to my staff. My hope is that I can offer up even better data next year so that other businesses my look at trying a more balanced approach to work.

So that’s 2019. Not a bad year at all.