UKH

Greetings world.

Tell me what achievements for 2018 are you most proud of ?

My biggest achievement in 2018 was to escape the rat race

After 20 years as a teacher I am now living in a cabin in the Arctic working with Huskies in a remote location, future dreams and achievements will build from this....

Awesome 

Doesn't it get a little lonely though ?

No, not with 97 Huskies to talk to! Also there's a team of 5 guides, and of course the customers / tourists.

Truth is I'm feeling the need for even more solitude than this! I've been lucky enough to spend time in some really remote and wild places in the past, and have dreamt of owning a log cabin at some point...

After two years of fannying about and talking myself out of it I took the plunge and went full career change.

I got my bounce back after processing big life changes, and survived some minor wobbles. 2019 is going to be 'a year of doing' after one of going 'hmmn'. Bounce is always good. 

I asked someone out. This happens once a decade, and always ends in rejection and it takes me another decade to ask someone again.

Sorry it didn't work out .

Hats off for the attempt though.

I've resigned myself to being single being as  I'm such a horrible person .

I didn’t post a dislike on any posts by The Lemming.

I put some curtains up in my bombsite of a house #betterthingstodo

Finally finished off my glider licence to a useful state and got some decent flights logged.

Blundered my way up Christmas Curry without dying or puking.

jk

Don’t think like that

You're bound to be crap at anything you practice only once a decade. Come on Blue, throw yourself out there. The worst likely outcome is you getting really relaxed about rejection.

You're not a horrible person, but low self esteem is a highly effective potential partner repellent. Cut yourself a little slack in 2019 and  you've a better chance someone else will too.

Edit: Shit that sounds cheesy. 

Helped by the long dry spell I got out climbing 50 days in 2018, the most for quite a long time (20 years or thereabouts).

I always make a point of visiting a few new crags every year (new to me) but managed 14 new crags this year, again the most for a long time including quite a few remote mountain crags that are rarely dry. I began to think that an hour walk in was quite short!

I don't think I questioned the grading capabilities of a certain NE climber once...

Andy F

Well, on here anyway.

I did 672 routes in 2018, the most I have done in the 12 years since I started recording my routes in the UKC logbooks - don't expect to match that this year, or ever again .

Chris

Thanks . I appreciate the sentiment .   Wish I felt different but it's how it is nowadays, endless loneliness.  Character building? 

I gained 2 stone! Now given myself till June to lose it.....and the 1 stone I planned to lose last year!!

2lbs a week for 5 months +/- a bit of variation!

Achievements;

Still here and alive.

Got a new'ish job....lower grade but less hassle.

Cant think of any others which tells me I need to do more this year!

After more than 20 years at the helm, I concluded the sale of my company in late 2018. I'm proud to have looked after all my staff, more than half of whom have been with me for over a decade, and to leave them as the best-paid cohort in our whole industry. And the most productive. They are ranked highest in the UK according to our industry analysts. All of which made it possible to find a new owner who shares our values and will treat the employees with the respect to which they are due.

It was an exhausting and exhaustive process. The deal took 4 years to conclude from opening negotiations. I am therefore no longer an active CEO and will have to find a new outlet for my energies.

Get out climbing more!

Not quite in the "living with 97 huskies in the middle of nowhere" league, but having taken redundancy from my previous job in 2017 after 20 years in the same sort of buying roles, I started a completely different job this year, and am actually really enjoying my work for the first time since about 2003, and living comfortably enough off just over half the salary. I mean, I could do with a little more for some bigger trips, and to put into pensions and other boring stuff, but day to day its fine, and I HAVE NO STRESS! 

I also managed to build and launch my own little website for my photos and articles, something I enjoyed doing. For 2019 I need to get back to the thing and keep refreshing it, because I've slacked off over the last few months.

Graduated with the PhD that nearly killed me and took me out of climbing (at the time my only enjoyment and social structure) for four years.  All behind me now.

Started climbing again.

I completed my MSc and graduated in December, after deciding to quit my job and go back to uni as a mature student in 2017. As someone who'd been out of education for 12 years I wasn't sure what I was letting myself in for but I loved the experience, worked incredibly hard and discovered my inner geek, and was delighted to end up with a Distinction and an award for the best overall performance.

Hush, I'm about to start one of those and I'm still at the stage where I'm convinced I'll have more free time than while I was doing my masters... don't burst my bubble!

P.S. Congratulations!!

Depends on the field, and what your project actually is.  For some people it does give them a lot of free time and flexibility.  If, however, you start a PhD that's heavily cell biology (allowing very little flexibility), make no effort to plan efficient working (thus remove any flexibility you might otherwise have had) and proceed to have a dreadful relationship with your supervisor you're going to hate it.  

Also thanks.  I was so proud that, when they put the hat on my head in the gowning room before the ceremony, I cried.  I'm quite up-front about my awful experience but I've stopped attempting to put people off because the pride and sense of accomplishment is something that will never leave me, no matter what else I do during my career or life outside it.

Making it through the week

A friend went through similar hell, but another friend just sat up around the clock towards the end after too much 'meeting up for coffee', and solved things like that.

Edit: The second friend is annoying like that.

Becoming a dad (although not really an achievement, quite a simple task actually. Being a dad is far more challenging) 

Resigning from a very well paid and secure job to start my own business 

Not going insane after 5 months of garden leave

What was your business if you don't mind saying on here?

I suppose mine was continuing to study hard for my career change, nothing more important than that really.

I thought I was doing well getting out 50 days, how many days out does 672 routes need?

Can't wait till I'm retired.

After about 40 years of working with electronics I had the confidence to repair my 40 year old amplifier that I was going to throw away, before finding out how much vintage audio equipment was worth to some people.

So with a few hours work and about £200 of parts I am back to where I started but with a new appreciation to what I had considered to be nothing more than scrap.

About 140 days climbing, so not totally obsessive .

Chris

Congratulations, I know how hard that can be, after a failure to agree a sale this year!

I don't think I have any achievements in 2018.

2017 ended very badly for some of my loved ones, one of my sons was in a serious motorcycle accident and my Dad was diagnosed with cancer, he died in early 2018..

I also managed to get myself into a fight, was arrested, and spent a night in the cells - a first for me at the ripe old age of 51. To cap it all I've had back pain for almost the whole year. If I have an achievement, it's that I kept my shit together, on more days than I didn't.

Roll on 2019. I'm hoping to move house before the end of January. Clean sheet and all that.

It's fascinating how PhDs in different fields can be approached so differently.  My actual thesis took me six weeks to write, from the very first word to the last, then about as long again to get corrections from my supervisor.  It was also only about 40,000 words.  Most of my PhD was the lab work, learning the techniques and then gathering the data.  I know people with social science and humanities PhDs who would want to slap me for only writing for six weeks - they basically had to start from the word go.

Sometimes the best achievement is getting to the end of it in one piece.  I hope 2019 is better for you and your family.  My condolences for your Dad and I hope your son is okay.

Thanks. We had a false start 4 years ago when a negotiation broke down. It's pretty common as I'm sure you know. Just had to keep going and eventually the right offer came in. Good luck with your project.

I finally managed to succeed in backpacking the Pennine Way, at the 3rd time of asking, avoiding injury and malady.

Overall, 19 glorious days from Edale to Kirk Yetholm, in which I only had to get the waterproofs on for an hour or so, and never knowingly passed a boozer that was serving ale.

Finally bit the bullet about the ongoing issues with work, and went to a job interview for the first time since 1998.

(I didn't get it, but I'll feel a lot better about the *next* interview.)

Managed two major achievements in 2018:

Got into a relationship after 8 years of being a staunchly single 67 year old grumpy! Came as a big surprise! Can't beat that for an achievement!

Had a serious eye infection and looked liked losing what little sight I had. An amazing eye surgeon rebuilt the eye that nearly exploded and then had to repair the other so that I wasn't 'disfunctional' (getting headaches because of the mismatch!) After 67 years of wearing bottle bottom spec I now have near perfect vision. Can't beat that as an achievement. PS The operation was with a 'local' and my surgeon has the same awful sense of humour as me, so we spent nearly an hour telling each other jokes and making 'funny' comments while he worked on my eyeball and explained what he was doing. Some of his students went green and left the theatre!

Thanks Lorna.

My son almost lost his leg and he's been wearing an ilzarov frame for about 18 months, but he's on the mend and back at work part time.

No worries there, I won't be going near a lab

Definitely keen to avoid that. One of my supervisors is in industry rather than a proper academic and we're both keen to take a project management approach to it to help with structure and efficiency

Well, that remains to be seen but both of my supervisors seem lovely so I've got my fingers crossed!

Academics are encouraged to be scientists first and foremost.  Managers and supervisors in other industries are encouraged to be managers.  Plenty of academic supervisors are absolutely fine but there's a worrying number that are very poor at managing people.  You need to teach them how to manage you.  I've spoken to a lot of people who have had a bad time during their PhD and the main thing I learned is that they needed more and better feedback; it was certainly my problem as well.  I got practically no positive feedback for the entirety of my PhD - any compliments I got on my effort or performance were from other people.  

Congratulations on dodging that bullet.  I'm sure you'll do absolutely fine.