It’s been a pretty turbulent year for me – full of moves and (career)changes. It seems like we moved to Rijswijk so much longer ago than a year, but it’s been only a year now that I fell in love with this apartment. Time sure flies. Lots of things have changed. Some for the better, some a bit less. Some people I’m more in touch with, others less. It’s the way things go.

Anyway, you find my end of year reflection for 2007 under the link.
I’d also like to note that this year is heralding my TENTH reflection. I’ve been doing these reflections for ten years now (I only miss the one from the year 2000 unfortunately) but isn’t that awesome? And if I look back on the Lannie from 1997 — christ, things have changed. *grins* Still in my final year at high school, trying to get over my breakup with Olli, losing Nienke to a new life, going out in the nightlife in Hoorn with Merel… my life was very different back then. It’s been only ten years. Only ten? OMG, ten years. I’m getting old

January
After a rather lowkey but comfortable New Year’s party and the decision to focus on writing output this year by writing 100,000 words at least, realization suddenly hit. We were moving from Hoorn to Rijswijk on the 23rd and we still needed to arrange everything! So January was mostly dedicated to the move to Rijswijk – packing up our life in Hoorn, arranging everything, and making sure that the new tenant of our house in Hoorn could move in easily.
It was rather stressy, also because my job was moving as well (from one tower in the WTC to another) and work was incredibly busy & frustrating at that time. I had a week off for the move itself that was mostly spent sniffling, coughing, sleeping and scourging the Ikea, after which I returned to work again.

February
The first week of February I got sick though; and not just a little bit. What started out as a flu escalated into a full-blown throat infection that I walked around with for too long and I ended up sitting home for a week watching snow fall and missing the Snow Patrol concert that I’d been looking forward to. This sitting home watching MTV2 all day did result in the discovery of Enter Shikari and some cool writing though, so not all was lost.
During this month though it became increasingly clear that work was stressing me out immensely and that the light was going out. It had been dimming for a while but I really hit a wall concerning my job in February. Olli confronted me with that a week before my contract negotiations started. I was planning to ask some serious improvements – and the first sign on the wall was they weren’t really planning to giving me any. I stressed out – because I knew that I needed those improvements otherwise I’d have to end my employment there… and I loved my colleagues. It was a horrid decision to even contemplate, which I drowned in some heavy duty FF12 playing.

March
On the first day of March I got a headhunter after me – and I decided to meet up with him, so I would have an offer lying next to the one of my then-current job. In the end the offer he made me was good enough, combined with the promise of something else… that when my then-job didn’t really offer me what I wanted, it was enough to pull the plug. They asked me to stay on for two additional weeks for a proper handover, and then I left my job. It was a heavy decision to make, and I admit I shed quite a few tears over that one. Leaving that place was very surreal. Sometimes I still feel as if I work there still.
The wonderful Stone Sour gig came right on time… I needed that SO badly. Brenda and I also did a lot of plotting and writing for Red Hell, which was awesome. My new job started, which was fun enough, although I realized quite quickly that trueblue headhunting wasn’t really my thing. Still, there was this project in Rotterdam coming up, so I wasn’t that bummed about it.

April
I started at the project in Rotterdam and discovered quite early on the icyness with which they received me. I was very obviously an outsider and was treated at such. I grit my teeth and hoped that they would warm up towards me. It helped that I had other cool stuff going on like writing, the Fantasy Fair and Powerfest (with that terrific/wonderful All That Remains gig). Also, the weather was bloody gorgeous, so I spent my lonely lunchbreaks in the sunshine with a book.

May
Enter month five of the year… in which the project went on pretty much in the same way. The sitting recruiter was on holiday so I took over the full recruitment of the company, which went easily enough. The warming up thing of the colleagues didn’t go that easily though. I was beginning to get really unhappy with that project. While the work was nice enough, the ignore fest was really setting my teeth on edge. I am a social person, I go nuts if I don’t have anyone to talk to. To have your presence pretty much denied does unhappy things to a person.
Thankfully we had Pinkpop to end the month with, which was awesome. The lightning storm and the giggles on the camping in Heerlen (I’ll never forget the Beator joke…), the sun breaking through during Gabriel Rios, watching the pretty lightshow during Muse, making fun of 30 Seconds To Mars in the rain, Stone Sour (*purr*) talks and laughs on the camping, missing out on half of Snow Patrol because of it… I had a great time.

June
June showed a ray of hope because Recruiter A came back from holiday and because I didn’t burn the company down she suddenly seemed to decide that I was okay after all, and she and I finally started to hit it off. We had lots of fun during a campus recruitment day on the TU in Delft… and then she promptly resigned for another job. Fucking figures.
Also, Olli’s project was suddenly terminated and I was really bummed over that one, even though he didn’t seem very upset over it. Thankfully the phone was ringing off the hook with new job offers, so there was never much worry about that. I worked five days a week at the project in Rotterdam to cover for A’s resignation for a while, and that didn’t really make me very happy. It was during that time that I got truly and well addicted to Popomundo without return. Escapism anyone? I had longlonglong talks with Stephen and the band really started to get its breakthrough now.
Olli and I had a lovely 2 year anniversary, and also music was very important this month. First there was the awesome Enter Shikari gig in Waterfront in Rotterdam with Bren… and then there was Rock Werchter which brought sunshine and music and much needed festival spirit <3

July
…back to the real world for a while. I toughed it out at the project where an interim recruiter (also A, but a guy in this case) started to back me up. Because he and I had to work together a lot at least I had someone to talk to. There was great news about a new project for Olli just hours after he finished his last one, so that was a good note on which we could go on holiday. And a few weeks later there was the holiday in France, which was a week of utter bliss, sunshine, ambitious dam building projects in the river, lying around listening to music, cardgames, companionship and booze.
I also wrote Sixty Minutes during this month, which was to be the premiss of my Nano story of November. Did a lot of good writing this month anyway. That also helped. There was sun too, in bursts between immense rainshowers and thunderstorms.

August
The first week of August was gorgeous – we went to the beach a few times with Bas and Dagmar. I was through with the job in Rotterdam and was pretty much off in lala land – Popomundo and storywriting reigned supreme in my head. Escapism for the win! My boss had been promising to get me out of there for a few months now, but in the end I spent all of August still working there. Olli started his new project in Leidschendam and had to go to Manchester for a few days for training. It was weird being the one to stay behind this time, because I was always the one to go away for work. Still, his plane didn’t crash and he came home safely, so no worries there.

September
…was a pretty low-key month. We missed out on a gig of As I Lay Dying because I misplaced our tickets, but the most important thing was that my project in Rotterdam ended on 22 September. I was so happy to leave that behind and succesfully finish my first project. We also had a fun makeup evening at Dagmar’s place.
I also got a permanent contract at work and a study to follow, so I signed up for a post Bachelor course in Training and Teamcoaching. I was pretty excited about that!

October
In October I was back at work HQ in the Hague again fulltime. And while I loved finally spending some time with the colleagues, I was now supposed to headhunt full-time and hit another wall. I’ve really not been very happy with work this year, as opposed to last year. I just really can’t bring myself to do it with flourish… or fun, for that matter. And that hurts, because it means I’m not really suited for the work here, either. The study was starting off and being great fun, though.
And of course this month was spent being excited over Nanowrimo. The kickoff was a lot of fun, and Brenda and I spent some feverish time making eachother crazy about it. Popomundo was also a blast, because we were doing a World Tour with a few befriended bands and we were playing so much better than expected.

November
The first five days of November were golden. It was me and Bren holed up in my apartment, Olli being all supportive, and just five days of writing spree. It was a mad dash of five days to write 50,000 words in a frenzy that I’ll never forget. The story that I spawned was a lot of fun, all action, and lots of explosions and adrenaline. It was a great experience. However, I kind of fell out of love with the community because both Bren and I seemed to detect jealousy instead of support from the other people. It was pretty quiet on many fronts after we did our thing – that kind of took the shine off it all, but I got over it pretty quickly because I still have a beautiful story to love.
The last week of November was equally frenzied and awesome: first there was the Eindhoven adventure, in which Olli and I spent a regular wednesdaynight having a beer with Stephen from Popo IRL and then going to the Still Remains gig which was great, then the day after I went to a recruitment dance event with my colleagues (and got interviewed for the Automatiseringsgids btw!), then the Friday and Saturday when we had the meeting with the lovely people we initially met on DM but are hanging out with on Popo now mostly – much booze and friendship was had – and the Sunday with the Serj Tankian gig.

December
And December has been kind of quiet so far. I’m on a new project in Utrecht now and finally admitted to myself that I might be burnt out on recruitment completely, but I’ll have to tough it out for now… I got myself a tattoo on my left shoulderblade (which has to be re-inked in a month or so, because apparently I shouldn’t have drank those few beers the night before, I bled like a motherfucker) and it didn’t even hurt all that much. Oh, and there’s been Christmas and the Guitar Hero addiction. And… of course, we’ll end off the year with a bang and a great party at Derek & Sanne’s place.

In hindsight it strikes me of how GREAT my personal life has been the past year. I love living in the greater Den Haag area so much more than I thought I would, I had great times with friends (vacations) and music (shitloads of gigs and festivals and music listening on my shiney) and writing (plotting and writing Red Hell, Shards, the Fortress short stories, and finally the whole Nano experience – I’ve written over 100K this year) – and then my working life has been pretty miserable. From my old job to the Rotterdam project to realizing that recruitment is not for me and it probably hasn’t been for a year already. Still, it’s a good realization to reach, and I’m going for my diploma in my current study and then a career switch towards training and teaching, I think… but I’ll keep my options open. I know how life goes, it never goes as you expect it to be. Who knows where I’ll be next year around this time? Olli and I decided that we won’t be buying houses or moving and we want to go on a good vacation with the two of us this year… that’s a given. I want to finish my study, and furthermore… I want to write, I want to party, I want to love (not necessarily in that order, by the way). It sounds like a reasonable plan to me…

Filed under: End of Year, Journal, Love, Music, Reflection