Another year is coming to a close. My kids are growing up fast, I have 4 white hairs in my beard and I still don’t have the sports car I dream of.

I look back on this year with a tinge of sadness but a lot of excitement going forward into 2016.

The last year has been hectic from a personal level. It started rather badly when I lost my job in Manchester. I was only there 4 months… if that. I joined on a wave of excitement towards a new venture and a new direction for me. It wasn’t in the end the right move for me. I had given up something good and failed.

I had been chasing the UX dream (whatever that is) for a while but looking back now, I was blinded by something I really didn’t have much knowledge of and should have listened to my head rather than heart.

Truth be told, losing the job was the best thing to happen to me as it forced me back to front-end development. A discipline I thought was not for me when actually in the end, it really was all I wanted to do. I just needed to have a scare to realise.

I don’t look back at it as a failure. I look at it as a learning curve. At the time it killed. Not having a job is alien to me and here I was not earning.

Luckily though, I was able to find something pretty quickly.

I was now back in front-end development. I was going to be building websites again. With the trauma behind me, I set about fixing some of the gaps in my knowledge and really got to grips with WordPress and jQuery and for a few months things were going really well when out of the blue, an opportunity arose to work with an old friend which I couldn’t turn down from a personal point of view and from a professional one too.

So after 7 months, I moved again to my current position. A position where I am working with a great team on some really great projects. Because I don’t do things by halves, it comes with a tremendous learning curve in the form of Magento. But it’s a really exciting time with Magento at the moment so I’ve come in at the right time I believe.

So yeah, an exciting year. Lots of change which I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not great with. It’s always a concern when you see people that move job to job which is something new to me. Up until last year, I’d hardly moved about mainly because I hate change yet here I am having three jobs in one year.

Looking back, at the circumstances and everything surrounding it, I take a lot from all of it and feel now, I am at the top of my game having learnt from many people and experiences.

Hopefully 2016 won’t have anywhere near as much change as 2015. It’s an exciting year for me and the team and I can’t wait to get back to it all.

One thing I have learnt is to not have regrets. We make our own paths and how we deal with situations makes us stronger.

Have a great New Year and all the best for 2016.