I didn’t start this website to act as a personal blog. My intention was to write about things that interest me in the SEO, CRO, Content Marketing and general Digital Marketing space.

However, I’ve been fairly quiet lately. Much less active than what I’d initially intended and would have liked to be.

This blog is simply an update on what’s been happening in my life over the past six months, and a bit of a recap on the crazy first half of 2021 to help justify to myself that sometimes it’s ok to focus on other bigger picture things than new projects that haven’t yet picked up any momentum.

February to March

My partner and I had known for some time that she was going to have to undergo some serious neuro-surgery for a chiari malformation at some point this year.

The backlog for surgeries in NSW prevented that from happening as quickly as we wanted (initially between July and October 2020), but the call came very quickly in February that within a few days she would be under the knife and in hospital for about a week. A huge thank you to Dr Erica Jacobson for her amazing care and work.

As you might expect, a surgery that involves a craniectomy isn’t a quick in-and-out job. It’s a long road to recovery which led to me having to take a bit of time off work to act as a primary carer.

It was during this time, that I recieved a call from my manager at Spark Foundry to inform me that he’d be leaving the business. Timely!

I returned to work to some big projects underway, having to catch up on the time off and starting handover discussions for work life as a new-look team, with me receiving a promotion to lead the Digital Experience team after my manager leaves.

As my parter started to recover and get stronger, we came to the decision that we should start looking to buy a property.

So within the space of about six weeks we’d gone through a serious operation, a career milestone and kicking-off the process of one of the most stressful things in life, in buying property.

April to May

They’re not wrong when they say buying property is extremely stressful. As we went through the process I learnt a lot about what I’d do differently next time. Such as – use a mortgage broker. Trying to go through the complex finances myself wasn’t the smartest move I made, but I can only thank and highly recommend Ann Kinghan for her outstanding help and guidance along the way. For anyone looking for a conveyancer in Sydney, go with Ann.

At the end of April we became home owners and moved our lives from Zetland, Sydney, to Kirrawee in Sutherlandshire.

We also went through a great purging of old furniture and possessions. So our first few weeks of moving into new home was buying new furniture and furnishings, unpacking, organsing and setting up life in the Shire.

Two days before our move, I also had my Citizenship ceremony, which was an amazing event and a beautiful day. In the same week, I had my boss leave, a Citizenship ceremony, settlement on the property and moving house. Absolutely hectic. I had some brief moments of anxiety and stress, but as my grandparents ever so helpfully told me when I spoke to them about stress and anxiety, “why don’t you just chill out?” Sound inter-generational advice.

During weekdays, after an hour commuting from work, walking the dog and having dinner, the last thing on my mind was writing content. Similarly on weekends, where we spent hours in shops, assembling furniture, exploring our new area and meeting up with friends we hadn’t seen in a long time as Covid restrictions lifted.

It was a good time to enjoy life and not have to think about work or project-related issues.

June

Life started to settle down. Back in rhythm, back playing sports two or three times a week and back into the office having settled into the new position as Digital Experience Director.

And then Covid struck again in NSW. Welcome to lockdown 2.

Back working from home, back trying to virutally connect with team and clients. However, in trying to find a silver lining in such a situation meant that I can started to think about picking up working on this website again.

I don’t anticipate anything like the last six months again (at least not for a very long time), so I expect myself to be able to commit more to this blog and building a profile to help local businesses in Australia drive better online performance through digital channels.