Goodbye and Good Riddance to 2021

I’m saying goodbye and good riddance to 2021. Part of this is to look back on one of the most challenging years of my life to reflect. And to tell you how that year has shaped me and this podcast moving into 2022. And I’m not claiming 2022 as “my year” or the year to be all years, I am just hoping it isn’t the emotional rollercoaster 2021 was.

I also know I am not alone when I say that last year was a mess. We all have challenges, struggles, good times, and bad times. I hope that by sharing some of my life events and experiences with you, you’ll realize you’re not alone. I’m not alone. And even though we aren’t going through the exact same experiences at the same time, we can find comfort in knowing others have their own crap going on.

Let’s start with summarizing my 2021 in one phrase: Emotional Roller Coaster.

When I decided to create this episode, I started thinking about everything that I’ve been through in 2021. It wasn’t all bad. In fact, there were some really great things that happened. What kept popping in my head as I was reflected, was a roller coaster – with its slow-building hills, and fast drops and twists and turns. That image or feeling of being on a roller coaster is the perfect way for me to describe my life last year.

Can you relate?

I’ll give a quick recap of these highs and lows not to bore you with my personal life, but so you can understand some of the changes I’m making with my company Marketers Take Flight, and this podcast.

If you’ve been listening to this podcast since the beginning, you’ll know that we ended 2020 with my mother-in-law getting a pretty scary health diagnosis. This caused us to move her from Seattle to Gainesville in just a few short weeks. She is doing well and is now splitting her time between the two places.

So, the ending of 2020 was just a preview of what 2021 had in store for me. 2021 began with my daughter being diagnosed with scoliosis and having to wear a brace about 18 hours a day. This definitely affects the fashion choices of my 12-year-old.

But it started to look up with my husband and I found not one but two real estate investment properties. We had purchased one in 2019 and spent nearly all of 2020 looking for another one, this time close to the beach. We didn’t plan to buy two or buy them nearly at the same time, but when you find a good real estate deal you don’t pass it up! After 2-3 months of working on the weekends and unpacking hundreds of boxes of furniture, we have two vacation rentals in St. Augustine Beach, Florida. And, I am happy to report they have been nearly 100% occupied and we are even turning some profits!

But what goes right, must come down. Or something like that.

Just weeks after vacation rentals started renting to guests, my husband got really sick. I mean night sweats, weight loss, couldn’t get out of bed sick. After a few weeks of tests, doctors’ appointments, and worry, he was officially diagnosed with stage 4 Hodgkins Lymphoma. The Big C. Cancer. It had touched so many other family members and friends, but now it was in our house.  

Needless to say, we were shocked, scared, and somewhat relieved to have a diagnosis. Luckily we live about 2 miles from the University of Florida and UF Health which is one of the nation’s best cancer centers. We met with his oncologist, who by the way treated his grandmother for the same cancer type, to develop the treatment plan. He began treatment right away, but it would take six months. It was now July so the treatment would last until just before Christmas.

We had a plan. And, you know me, I like a plan with steps and structure. He would get through this and the kids and I would help him. And, we have about 20+ family members in town including both his mom and his dad, and stepmom. We have a very strong support system. He and I also went vegan at the beginning covid in 2020. He lost about 60 lbs. and stopped drinking alcohol in 2020. This diagnosis came in July 2021.

Neither my husband nor I am religious or very spiritual people. But both of us think that some higher being encouraged us to move back to Gainesville in 2017 and live close to our extended family. And some higher being spoke to my husband to get his diet and exercise in order in 2020. We both feel like those decisions and actions were somehow preparing him to fight this cancer in 2021. It brings tears to my eyes as I say this out loud.

He has since finished his treatments and all signs point to remission. We will know for certain toward the end of January. We are so very thankful that the side effects from the chemo treatments were minimal.

Now, just like a roller coaster, when you have a big drop, you go up next.

And this next up or high point from 2021 is my son’s senior year. He’s a senior in high school and that comes with all the normal emotional moments that most parents encounter. He also plays football, and his team barely won any games in 2020 with a new head coach. But in 2021, his team won their district championship and ended the season with a winning record. Seeing how much the players work through very hot and swampy Florida spring and summer brought me a lot of joy watching them celebrate after the district championship game.

Senior year also comes with college applications and hopefully acceptances. So far, my son has been accepted to two colleges and is waiting to hear back from a few more. I am so proud to know that he will have some choices of where to go next year. It’s very exciting to see how his next few years will look like but at the same time nervous and sad to see him most likely leave home.

If I just had a senior year to deal with, it would be its own roller coaster of emotions!

2021 was also a milestone birthday for me. I turned 40 years old in October. I am sure you can relate that when you have a milestone birthday, you look at what you have done or achieved, look at where you are in life and your career, and take stock of that compared to where you thought you would be.

For my 39^th birthday, we were supposed to go see the Florida Gators play the Ole Miss Rebels at Ole Miss in the Grove. For those that don’t follow college football, the Grove is the epitome of football tailgating experience. Each tent is decked out with chandeliers and exquisite food and drinks.

Anyways, COVID canceled all travel, so we didn’t do that for my 39^th birthday. Now for my 40^th, COVID is still around, my husband is undergoing chemo treatments and can’t really do much, and my son’s football senior night was the night before my birthday. No biggie. I planned a half-day at a local spa. There’s not much a massage, facial, and pedicure can’t cure!

Well, when I got home, I was greeted by about 20 of my friends and family who were there to celebrate my 40^th. My husband had arranged for this surprise party to make up for all the birthday cancelations. I still can’t believe he pulled it off. And I can’t believe I was just in sweats with a red face from my facial!

So, while turning 40 might be a low point, my husband turned it into a high point for me.

Turning 40 also get me thinking or really deciding what I really like to do or do not like to do. For these past few months of being 40 I am finding that I’ve become more decisive and vocal about the ways I spent my time, the people I spend time with, and quite frankly if I don’t want to do something I just don’t.

For example, every year around Christmas I spend an entire weekend baking hundreds of cookies. We give them out as presents and eat more than we probably should. This year, I didn’t want to bake them. So, I didn’t. Everyone got gift cards to a new restaurant in town instead. I went to a Santa pub crawl with some friends instead of spending the weekend baking. And I don’t think anyone missed the cookies.

I don’t know if this is a 40-year-old thing or just I’m done with everything type of thing because of what we’ve lived through the last two years. Either way, it’s given me some clarity. Clarity around what types of projects I want to work on and how I want to spend my time.

This brings me to Marketers Take Flight. I created Marketers Take Flight in 2012 as a blog to provide information and resources around how to manage proposals in the AEC industry. And, 2017 I launched several online courses and digital eBooks to train new marketing coordinators. During all that time, I was a marketing manager that was training new marketing coordinators, so the content I shared on Marketers Take Flight was the same materials I was using. I knew it would help other marketing managers to train their coordinators and the like.

A few of my most popular blog articles are “Where have all the AEC Marketing Coordinators Gone?” Published in 2016 and “How to Develop a Go/No Evaluation Process” published in 2019. We are now in 2022 and the two most common challenges I still hear are: how to find experienced marketing coordinators and my firm doesn’t have a go/no go process or doesn’t follow it.

The third most common challenge is how to get technical staff to give you the proposal information you need. These are the same problems or questions I was asking as a new marketing coordinator back in 2005. 2005! That’s 17 years ago. That’s the same age as my son. In my son’s entire life so far, the challenges aren’t any different.

Clearly, we aren’t addressing them in the right way or coming at them from the right angle. And, frankly, I am sick of talking about them, writing about them, or figuring out new ways to teach about the solutions. And now that I’m 40 and have this new sense of doing what I want, I’m not going to. It just doesn’t give me energy or excitement about them.

I will still bring guests on from time to time to talk about proposals, being persuasive and creative, but I’m going to try to tackle these challenges from new angles because clearly, the way I’ve been talking about it isn’t working.

Also, I haven’t worked on proposals since leaving my last firm, BRPH, in 2017. Without being on the front line or in the proposal trenches for nearly 5 years, it just doesn’t feel authentic to have so much of my show dedicated to proposal coordination. In my current day job with Full Sail Partners, I am responsible for marketing and sales for our software products. It is very different from the proposal and pursuit world I was in before. And I’m absolutely loving it. I plan to talk more about marketing, specifically online marketing in the future.

And then there is you. You are a person. You’re not just a marketing coordinator or proposal manager or a business development manager. You’re a human being who has thoughts, feelings, emotions, needs, and wants that go beyond just your work tasks or the next proposal deadline. Because of this, I want to talk about your goals both at work and outside of work, the struggles you must meet those goals, how you structure your day to maximize your time and energy, permission to change those goals based on your season of life, and more.

By expanding the Marketers Take Flight show to just more than proposal management, my goal is to help you in all areas of your life. When I took the time to work on areas of my life outside of work, my work stress was reduced. That project manager that missed that deadline wasn’t as catastrophic. The shade of blue on the PowerPoint slide that wasn’t correct, didn’t matter as much. While I won’t be as focused on proposals in the show and my training, in the end, I think it will end up helping with your proposals.

If you’ve made it here, congratulations! This was a very long bonus episode. I wanted to spend the time to share with you my 2021 experiences and how those have shaped me personally and will shape the future of Marketers Take Flight.

One last time, goodbye and good riddance 2021 and hello to 2022.