2009, A Look Back
Alright, I know that the popular time to look back at the past year and to the future is in early January. But I say better late than never, or that I am not very popular, or that I don’t do anything when I am supposed to. Or I can simply say I have been thinking about this post since early January!
Anyway, 2009 was a pretty wild year, as it was for most people. With the downfall of the economy, and the subsequent collapse of the construction industry, my business (and others in my field) took a huge hit. Beginning in late 2008 and into 2009, I was forced to restructure the entire company and let go all of my full time regular employees, all of which who had been with me for years. That was a very hard thing to do, but it had to be done. Shortly thereafter, we had to abandon our downtown office location since we could no longer afford the rent. Fortunately, with those changes, and the work we did have, we were able to stay afloat.
We also sold our home last year. We were planning on doing it anyway, but moved the time table up about a year. In one of the worst housing markets in recent memory, we were able to get it under contract in 2 months. It didn’t go smoothly, but we were able to get it closed. I blogged about that earlier in the year. So in the end, within a six month period, we moved both our office, and our home. In both cases, we had been in place for 9 years, and in that time, we accumulated a lot of stuff! It is fair to say, we did a lot of downsizing. While it was hard to do, it was also a good thing. There were other ups and downs. We both had extended family issues to deal with as well, so we spent the last half of the year recovering from all that.
Looking forward to 2010, I am fairly optimistic. Business is starting to show some signs of life, and I take comfort in the fact that while the economy is no where close to great shape, the worst is behind us, and we can look forward to better days sooner than later. We are also making plans to build a new energy efficient home. This will be located in Midori in Northwest Fort Collins. We are also looking at the possibility of moving an older historic home. We are also moving ahead with the Midori development with my business partner, and we are getting some renewed interest in it again. I am also formulating plans for migrating my career focus over time and am talking to potential investors on that one. In January, I was also elected as chair of the Fort Collins Landmark Preservation Commission.
By the way, I do plan on blogging about our adventures in building our house. This is not entirely new to us, as I used to be part owner Wildflower Homes, and will likely be building a few homes in Midori as well. We are just beginning the design phase for our home, and will share ideas as we go.
Finally, the owner of one of the other blogs I follow posted that she was going to leave the area, and would be closing down the blog. It is a great blog about historical tidbits of Fort Collins, so I volunteered to take it over. The owner of the blog graciously agreed, so as of this week I have that one too. I do plan on keeping both blogs separate, but there could be some cross posting. Be sure to check it out, Lost Fort Collins.
