So the annual retrospective is upon us, and to be honest, 2011 proved not to be a very memorable in terms of personal growth year, completely unlike its predecessor 2010 which was filled to the brim with big and exciting stuff.

2011 was dominated by one thing, and one thing alone – raising Jessie. So outside of parenting 101 and experiencing all of her firsts, nothing else really of note happened during the year for me – no new hobbies, no change in direction in terms of work, no big projects completed, no weekends away, no new big stuff – in other words not exactly a huge year for me then.

And to make it even more depressing, there are a lot of unfilled goals to take note of as well.

I didn’t get to invest time into golf or running as I wanted to, I didn’t manage to up my fitness level considerably nor lose any weight like I needed to, I didn’t up my artistic output like I had planned, and I didn’t manage to get a single one of my personal projects/ventures off the ground, despite the fire in my belly at the start of the year – heck, even Chantelle has now gone and beaten me to the punch with her Cookies & Cakes venture!

All of that said and done though, 2011 wasn’t exactly a bad year either. We did see a lot of our friends and family last year, financially we were quite sound, and by sound I mean not in the red (apart from the first two months when Chantelle was still on unpaid maternity leave), and then of course there was the joy (and exhaustion) that comes from the devastatingly cute Jessica.

In other words, it was definitely still a good year for us – I’m just a little disappointed in not having achieved a lot of the things that I had wanted to!

And what about 2012 then? Realistically I know that time combined with Chantelle’s shift work will not allow me to increase my hobbies or activity list, in fact I may very well need to pull back on the existing set just to keep my sanity. I’m still very keen on launching my ventures, but again time will tell if I manage to find the discipline needed in order to get them in development and through to launch.

The two things that are however definitely going to change this year is the going away for weekends part (because both Chantelle and I fully deserve it and we need to make up for the lost trips from 2011) and the fitness level/weight loss thing, which should be a lot easier to achieve now that Chantelle is fully onboard – after all, come the end of 2012 we need to be pregnant again in order to stick to our two children, three year gap plan! Outside of that, I’m not planning on rocking the boat in terms of my work, nor will I drop my karate, which now stands at a year and a half time investment before I reach my ultimate goal of black belt.

And then there is of course the continued growing in being a dad for Jessica.

So in summary, I don’t foresee 2012 from being all that different from 2011, but hopefully this time around I can get at least SOME of the things on my wish list/want list done for a change! ;)