2010 was a stressful year. It started out with the simultaneous realizations that I was 10 pounds heavier than I ever imagined possible and that I was so deep in debt I needed to take drastic steps to cut my spending. Weight loss and saving money are complementary objectives and I recommend pursuing them both at the same time. Cook your own food and skip the booze and snacks. The pounds will melt away and you'll save a mint.
I joined a friend in using the LoseIt app to track calories, and incredibly by May I had lost the 10 pounds and then some. It was a little alarming because people kept asking what happened to my ass. Same thing that happened to my gut.
Cutting debt was a lot harder, because I needed to rid myself of several thousand more dollars than pounds. I didn't have a game plan, and if there's an app for getting by in New York City with a third of your income going to debt service, I have yet to discover it.
Nevertheless, I managed to plan several trips for the year, having become addicted to travel and elite flyer status. Despite the near poverty, I managed to go to Washington, Madrid, Chicago, London, San Francisco (twice), Provence, Berlin, and New Orleans last year. I leveraged reward points and traveled with friends to save money, but when I look back, I don't know what I was thinking. (But I'm still thinking it, as my 2011 travel calendar will attest.)
Aside from that, the job I'd been hating since before the great recession started was not getting any better, and yet I had to feel grateful to have a job at all. I focused on the fat and the spending and dealt with the job as well as I could manage. Eventually I'd find something else or they'd sack me.
At some point in April my roommate of six years told me he was buying a condo and would probably move out by September. Suddenly the fact that I was the only one who had spent any money on our apartment in the last three years made a lot of sense. His money was going elsewhere. I wasn't mad. He was a good roommate and a kind person, and it would be hard to find someone as good. I had to decide whether to stay in the apartment, move in with someone else, or try and make it on my own. It was another big variable in a life equation growing more complex every day.
By May it struck me that something weird was going on at my company. The senior members of my department, marketing and communication, seemed stressed. Their doors were always closed, yet client work and other projects were running behind schedule or not getting done at all. My office was in the middle of a long corridor with the CFO at one end and the CEO at the other, and there was a noticeable uptick in traffic. In retrospect, I can see that there are but a few explanations for situations like this: your company is going out of business, being taken over, or trying to hide something from the government. At the time, I was just so happy that no one was riding my ass about anything that it seemed like I might even come to like my job again.
In June, the head of my department finally broke the news: the company was being acquired by a much larger competitor. She needed the whole department's help in managing the PR and internal communication, and we were obliged to sign a non-disclosure agreement until the deal was announced. We all spent the next month working long hours and weekends, preparing plans and materials we had to revise every time the announcement was delayed. It was an incredible bonding experience, as times of excessive drinking so often are.
Thankfully, in terms of me not having to cancel my July vacation in London, the deal was finally announced at the end of June. And after that, my job got easy, because most of the work dried up. Nobody was starting new projects, and it was the middle of summer. Anybody with a phone was phoning it in.
As scary as it was to think I would be out of a job in a few months, the acquisition presented an opportunity to get out of debt: because of the takeover, I could either roll my company's retirement plan into the acquiring company's plan or I could cash out. After some serious number crunching, I realized that even with the early withdrawal penalty, I could erase my debt and have a few grand to spare. I went for it. A lot of us did.
At the end of July, the deal closed, and we were all officially employees of another company. Incredibly, except for the department head, my team all had secure jobs. One person left, but the rest of us are still there, eight months later.
I decided to stay in my apartment and find a new roommate. I met a few potential ones, including a sexy Hungarian personal trainer. Then my current roommate announced his condo deal would not close in September. Alas, the hot Hungarian roommate was not to be.
If anything happened in August, I don't remember. Too much tequila. I did buy a new suit at Brooks Brothers. A coworker's wedding was coming up, and I was still certain I'd be looking for work soon.
By September, the integration teams were in full effect at work. I flew south to meet my new manager and to attend a conference. It was a great show of confidence for them to pay for me to travel anywhere, much more than anything I'd experienced in the previous three years. A lot of people were worried about their futures with the new employer, but for me, all signs were encouraging.
In October, things were degenerating at the old workplace, as they must during a takeover. The obvious overhead were given notice, and there were some surprises and a few voluntary resignations. I couldn't wait for November to relocate to the new company's office. My roommate announced he'd move out by the end of November, and I picked a new roommate for January, a friend of a friend of my old roommate who ran in the same circles as me, when I bothered to run at all.
In November, the disbursement from my retirement fund came. I happily scheduled three huge credit card payments and then went shopping for bedroom furniture. I visited a friend in France, which was kind of awful and deserves a post of its own, someday.
In December I got my apartment ready for the new roommate: switched bedrooms, cleaned the carpets, nearly broke my back lifting things. I'm sure I could have skipped it all and the new roommate would never have noticed. I went to Berlin for a week, having canceled an earlier planned trip there because of work. December is not the best month for a vacation in Northern Europe, but Berliners take the snow in stride. You can get by rather affordably as a tourist in Berlin, and the nightlife is great, even in December. Then it was back to the States for the holidays, yadda yadda yadda, and finally New Orleans for New Year's Eve.
The lesson I learned from the last year is that if you don't actively work to control your destiny, something else will. Or that no matter what you plan for, unforeseen things will make you change your plans. Or maybe it's that you can't stop change. Whatever it was, I'm thankful for most of the changes, sad about some, and hope I never again go through a year like 2010.
