In the very early hours of the 23rd of December 2014 I woke from a beeping sound. I got up, could smell smoke and wrapped a towel around me to have a look in the staircase. It was filled with smoke. I rushed in and woke up D and then I called 112.
About two weeks later on 2 January 2015 we all of a sudden found ourselves without our internet, TV and phone service. It cut out right in the middle of creating my UX Fika website that was supposed to go live that Monday. We were told we wouldn’t get internet back until the 16th of Jan. Then the date moved to the 19th.
A week after that I was sat at my GPs with my top and bra off when the doctor told me “Yes, there is definitely a lump”. She was talking about my right breast.
All of the above have turned out well. My referral to the breast clinic at Charing Cross Hospital confirmed that I don’t have cancer, but just a harmless cyst. As for the fire alarm incident, it was isolated to a towel on the ground floor so we didn’t have to make our way out from the 4th floor of a burning building. And though that UX fika website is still not up a year later, we did get our internet back after 11 days. And our phone and TV service.
Each one on their own and all of them combined with the end of a year and start of a new one, made me stop and think. About what matters and the kind of life I want to live. I generally trust my internal compass and as for my lump, my instinct told me that things were ok, but of course the thought crossed my mind, that what if I was wrong and the doctor tells me I have cancer. Then what?
Just a few hours before the fire alarm incident, D and I had had a long good chat about life and the year that had been. We were in the flat we’d rented in Malmö and our conversation that night had involved tears. Nothing serious, but some things were hard for me to hear.
2014 was the year I gave too much of myself. I was too accommodating and nice, both on a personal level with regards to some things that were going on, but also on a professional level and with how we worked on Glimt.it. The incidents and my chat with D made me realise that things needed to change. In my attempt to fix things in my personal life and to get Glimt.it and byflock off the ground, I’d given away a little too much of myself and it meant a lot of other things had have to give. And I was worn down physically.
When the new work year began I chatted to the team about the vision for Glimt.it and what it as a business needed, what I realistically could offer – or rather not offer – now and the next couple of years and I asked them to think about whether they still wanted to be involved. I explained why I’d be putting a stop to meeting during weekends and evenings, which had previously been the only way to get everyone together when part of the team was working full time elsewhere. And I decided to hire one more person as soon as I could.
Turning a side project into a business means that something has got to give, but it also gets to a point quite quickly when you need look at what’s justifiable to take from and what’s not. The events that happened at the end of 2014 and early 2015 made stop and think about that.
Whilst there are a lot of things that matter, there are few things that really matter when it comes down to it. Last year I set out to be truer to those. It meant some hard, yet at the same time easy decisions on a personal and a professional level. Whilst I’m much, much better for it, I didn’t crack the right balance in 2015 and there’s one particular factor that played a big part in why.
Image via Flickr user EO1
