The hardest year of my life

I turn 31 today and this past year has been, by far, the most difficult one I have ever had. I am a workaholic, so most of my joys and disappointments are generally related to my work. This past year has been a landmark for me professionally and as a human being.

A while back I said yes to a position I thought was the ultimate challenge in my career. I had never done management before and when I took it on – running a small agency I mean – I thought that it would be a piece of cake, especially since I seemed to be surrounded by a lot of people trying to help, and had a well of enthusiasm boiling inside of me, mainly generated by the novelty of the situation.

All this was happening in 2008, October, just as the financial crash came tumbling over Eastern Europe and made everything different. I was 30, I had never been in charge of anything other than my strategy presentations and my power point slides and my own flat and car. All of which I seemed to manage satisfactorily.

Being a manager has changed everything I though I knew and everything I though I knew about myself. I used to think that I was able to muster up endless resources of energy to finish up everything. I used to think that if something was not being done I could do it myself. I used to think that I could be very good at almost anything. Having to manage a team of people, revenue, salaries, clients, strategies sometimes gets pretty overwhelming and it took me a while to realize that some of the things I knew didn’t really apply. The one constant realization is that dealing with failure is the most important skill one can develop in order to progress. Strangely enough though, I don’t feel like writing I have learned a lot about teamwork and people skills and client management. I think all I knew about that before I became this new person largely still applies.

But I turn 31 today and if there is anything I have learned is that nothing works unless you keep it simple and have fun with it; and that the hardest thing to do is always, but always, remember that it will not work unless you stick by the two things said before.

So what I wish for myself this day is to always remember to not complicate things and have fun with whatever I am doing. Because only then, it all seems to work out fine.

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