The end of the year is here, time to reflect! Once again, it was a challenging year, but overall, a very good one!
One of the goals I set last year was to achieve a work-life balance. For several years, due to a massive workload and studies, I felt like I wasn’t spending enough time with my family (or at least it seemed that way, and it really stressed me out). Now, no single aspect of my life overshadows the others. There’s still plenty of work, but I’m strict about making sure it doesn’t affect my family or my well-being.
A very important part of my life—travel and timely rest—suffered in the spring and summer when work was just overwhelming. But by the end of the year, I made up for it: an amazing trip to Kenya with my mom and brother, a kizomba festival in Riga, solo time in London, a beach vacation in Cyprus with the kids and my mom, pure hedonism in Italy with my partner, and family skiing in Finland. Not bad at all!
At work, I achieved a goal that sometimes felt unattainable. Right now, I feel like I can do anything! The number of people in the company I work for has grown fivefold since I joined, more than doubling just in the past year. For HR, this number alone is a challenge. But beyond that, it also involved finding and hiring people for challenging positions in five new countries. I can’t share all the details, but I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished.
My main job takes up all my energy, so my blog didn’t grow this year, and the number of consultations I provided dropped significantly. But my desire to help people build meaningful careers hasn’t gone away, so I’m continuing to move forward in this direction. My Russian-language blog on Instagram now has an English-language twin—@career.pro (I’d be happy if you could share it with your friends).
I created an extensive training course in English on how to identify your strengths and successfully find a job for CerebrumHub. It turned out great, and I’m definitely not stopping here!
On a tougher note, something that needs to be addressed. I know well what burnout is and what causes it, and I was confident it would never happen to me again. Never say never. Life threw me a series of surprises that combined to knock me down hard. Now I’ve discovered another cause of burnout, but I’ll talk about that some other time. My physical and mental health took a serious hit, but I caught myself in time, and now I’m doing well. Thank you, Universe, for this lesson too.
I’m entering the New Year with grand plans and confidence that everything will work out!