Once upon a time I used to look forward to my birthday on the 30th of January, now I’m not so sure.
In January 2019 I was ready to hit the new year running. ODAS Construction Ltd had just started its biggest ever project in Liverpool. I had a good handle of the engineering side and hoped to leave the day-to-day running of the site to my business partner, Julian. This would give me the chance to spend some of my time in my previous career of consulting and management education. I had spoken about this with Luisa, a friend in Rome who would be a valuable assett to this plan, and my good friend and ex-colleague Federico flew in to visit from dublin and we had a brainstorming session.
Federico and I identified a common goal and an initial strategy sketched out. The next step would be to fly down to Rome and see what Luisa thought. But just before I could do that, the spanner appeared.
My business partner, Julian, caught a nasty strain of ‘flu and ended up in hospital in an induced coma. Then his kidneys failed. I was left worrying about what would happen to him and having to manage the day-to-day running of our biggest building project so far. It took Julian three months to begin to recover and the rest of the year to get back to normal. 2019, and all of my good intentions, had come and gone and I was no further forward.
Fast forward to January 2020 and another birthday. This time I was convinced – even the name, 20-20, sounded positive. This was going to be the year that made the difference. Yeah, the weather was pretty bad and we seemed to have one storm after the other but these would path and good things would happen. But just before they could, another spanner in the works.
Covid-19 came onto the scene and things started to lockdown. Business closed, suppliers shut their doors and travel was blocked. No chance of flying down to Rome this Spring.
So what is the point of this post? Well, I have decided that I am not going to let the lockdown hold me back. From now on, every day, I will use some of this forced downtime to take a step, however small, forward. 2020 will be the year I want it to be.
Life will always try to throw a spanner in the works. The trick is to pick up the spanner and make it work for you.