Well, what a year 2009 was for me...

I remember reading a long time ago that your 20s are for self-discovery and that by the time they hit their 30s most people have a good idea about the direction their life is going in. When I was 29 I was worried about that 'deadline' - would my life have any firm direction by the time I was 30? 

As it turned out, 30 turned out to be quite an eventful year, and one that should shape an interesting few years ahead. As I've turned 31 today I thought I'd look back at what's happened over the past 12 months.

• 2009 was the year blogging took over my life. I've been blogging since 2003 and my original 14sandwiches music review site when I was a student was arguably a prototype blog back in 1999. However, it was only when I relaunched 14sandwiches as a web-media-music blog in 2008 that I got a taste for regular writing and in April this year I saw that Zee at The Next Web was looking for writers. After firing off an email it took about 6 weeks to hear back but on the 28th of May I was thrust into high-speed tech writing with a piece about the announcement of Google Wave. Nearly 300 posts later it's been quite a ride. Tech blogging is addictive and after grabbing a few Techmeme headlines and Digg frontpages over the past few months I'm not planning to stop any time soon.
• In July I got married to Louise. It was a brilliant day and it was fantastic to get almost all the family together for the first time in years. The honeymoon in the Maldives wasn't too shabby either! :)
• Two days before my wedding I applied for the role of Digital Content Editor at Marketing Manchester. While I was on my honeymoon I checked my email to discover I'd been invited to an interview. The interview ended up being just hours after I returned to Manchester but somehow I fought through the jetlag to get the job. It's been a whirlwind three months there so far and being able to do what I love to promote the city I love is something of a dream job. The new version of VisitManchester.com that launches in Spring and although I can't divulge much about it, I'm really excited about the prospect of producing content for it once it's up and running.
• In November I gave two talks about Geolocational mobile services as part of KMP Digitata's InBlackAndWhite series. The feedback was positive and I hope that I'll be doing more of this type of thing in 2010.

So, 2009 turned out pretty good for me. The long-range forecast for 2010 looks promising. Let's see what unfolds...

[Image credit: JulianKleyn]