Yearly Review: Looking back at 2018

2018 is coming to a close and it’s time to start the process of looking back and looking forward.

We always love to start anew with the iconic January 1st, filled with hopes and dreams about new beginnings and goals to achieve. And, as the months go by, motivation dwindles and we tend to move on from one thing to the next, forgetting all that seemed to matter so much during our annual planning session. A Yearly Review is a good way to remember what the objectives were and to evaluate where progress was made… or not.

Last year, I followed the footsteps of Chris Guillebeau and after the December review session, I implemented the “Spreadsheet”… Seriously. Me. A SPREADSHEET. Gotta love Chris…

One benefit of the spreadsheet, though, is that despite giving me palpitations every time I opened it, I still opened it once a month and was able to estimate how my goals and intentions were moving along.

I had 44 “goals” on my spreadsheet, organized in 11 categories. Out of theses 44, I fully completed 11, maybe this number will climb to 12 or 13 before the end of December. Along the year, I scratched two, considering they were no longer priorities. So was 2018 a big ass failure? Not so fast!

The 2018 yearly review

This year, while I’m considering keeping the Spreadsheet, I also decided to add a bit of Leo Babauta’s Sacred Bow into the process. This is going to be a month long process… We’re only on Week one, there will be more to come. And week one is all about review.

Review: Spend the first week reviewing your year so far, noting your accomplishments and big events, taking notes on what you’ve learned and what you’ve struggled with, seeing where you’ve dropped the ball and where you could grow.

_Leo Babauta

I had major intentions for 2018 regarding my writing… In the end, I abandoned the morning pages mid-year, I let go of weekly blog posts, I put on the back burner the idea of freelance writing or attending a writers retreat. I did nothing for NaNoWriMo. FAIL. FAIL. And FAIL.
But… I found a new pleasure in writing. I started telling stories. Stories about my past or stories I made up and I had fun doing it.

As it turns out, business, and particularly RDE Marketing is what got most of my energy and attention this year. I reached my goal of 6-figures in sales. I signed three new international brands as clients and balanced the company’s revenue between teaching gigs and community management services. 
With Charlotte away and exploring new continents for a few months, I started building the foundation of The Kameleon Collective (our “army” of community managers) and defined better what I want to explore as an individual:

I help medium and large size companies benefit from implementing remote work by training their employees on how to gain in productivity and use this opportunity to strive.
I want to help those who are curious and already convinced that the traditional way of working is not viable on the long run.
Companies specifically who have a corporate office and are already allowing a somewhat flexible work schedule.

You know me, and I wouldn’t be me if Travel was not on the agenda… I visited nine countries this year, including three new ones: Portugal, Liechtenstein and Ireland. While TheVagabondMonkey did not find its audience, after attending WDS in Portland, John and I still traveled north to Seattle and Vancouver.

On the drop the ball subject, we can list the coaching certification that I never was able to commit to, the earnings I was hoping to get from side-hustles that I never was able to sell, the 10K I didn’t run (although I did 7k in Paris in September), the artistic events that I didn’t attend, the traffic I didn’t get (yet) on the blog… Oh there’s more, but I don’t want to bore you with details.

In the end, my 2018 yearly review is not so negative. And I feel like I progressed quite a bit on levels that I was not expecting. But this might be a good subject for next episode.

Cover photo by Joanna Kosinska