What a difference a year makes
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If I were writing this blog this time last year, I would probably have been sat at a desk in what was my bedroom in my parents' house. As it is, I'm sat on the couch in my own house trying to figure out how to type fluently on an iPad while a kitten keeps trying to get my attention by nudging my hands with his face. It's fair to say that 2012 has seen a lot of change.
Once, a year or so earlier, there was a plan that involved me saving lots of money with a view to having a decent enough deposit by April 2013 to consider buying a house. It was a good plan. It was the sort of plan that had spreadsheets and graphs. Not long after that plan was made, however, I had one of those 'boy meets girl' moments. It wasn't like it is in the movies, but there were good times and at least one dance number.
Girls change things. It is sometimes said that even the best plans don't always survive first contact. And when that first contact is with a girl, frankly they don't stand a chance. To be fair, my plans changed for the better. As it turned out, this particular girl had similar plans and while hers didn't have spreadsheets, they came with a similar sized deposit and a near identical goal.
The arrival of 2012 saw both sets of plans accelerated. At the start of the year, we started looking at houses to see what we would be able to afford the following year. By February, we'd realised that we could afford to buy a house sooner than we thought and had even found a patch of soil where we were told such a house would soon be. Before the month was out, we'd put a deposit in said soil on the condition that somebody would build the promised house on it by the time we moved out stuff there. At the end of June, the soil had a house and the house had a boy and a girl in it (at least insomuch as a thirty-one year old can be considered a boy, but as it's my story, I'm going with it).
In September, the house had been lived in for a while. We'd put furniture in it and even painted some of the walls. It was at this point that we decided to add a cat. Adding a cat to any building generally transfers ownership of said building to said cat. Luckily I like cats and don't mind. This cat, now called Steve, has been good enough to keep us both entertained and employed for the remainder of 2012.
In short, a lot has changed since our hero(!) wrote his last blog of 2011. His spreadsheets have become inaccurate and the lines on his graphs are no longer as impressive. But while there have been a mix of highs and lows throughout the year, much of that which has changed has been positive. As I write my final blog of 2012, I feel better for having changed my plans. The kitten, on the other hand, will feel better once I've finished this blog.