2018 WINS:

**I survived!

Honestly, that's good enough for me. Anything beyond that is gravy. It was definitely the most difficult year of my life.

**I figured out the "next phase" of my career. Time will tell, but I feel like I ended up with a good combo of significantly less stress/responsibility/work, in exchange for better pay than I was expecting (based on the regional job market). I was very open minded going into the job search (open to anything), but fell into a job that hit most of my marks. In the end, is probably a bigger break on the career front than I expected at this point in my life. That is a major win.

**Somehow, in the middle of that madness, we ended up having our highest income year ever.

{If you missed it, my small employer fell ill and sold the business to some super scammy company. I eventually quit without another job lined up. I had wanted to take some time off to regroup, but ended up getting a "too good to refuse" job offer on my very last day at old job. The catch was they needed me to start like "yesterday", which was the general vibe coming from employers. Any other job, I might have gambled some time off, but didn't want to lose this one. Then my old employer ended up undoing the business sale and hiring me to help them through some rough patches. So my expectations of unemployment and a significant salary cut ended up being more "drowning in work" all year}.

The end result? I quit my old job around 9/1 and took a 15% cut in compensation, but we ended the year with $875 more income than we did in 2017. 2017 had been our best income year ever, finally surpassing our 2001 income, last we both worked full-time. 2018 was somehow better.

**Net worth was up $51,000, or in line with our "big picture" goals.

**We finally ditched our gas guzzler (that we have been scheming to get rid of most the years I have blogged here). This newer car purchase was spurred by a cash gift, accepting a job that doubled my commute, minivan getting hit on the freeway, and minivan also needing a medium-sized repair ($750) the last day of my old job. By itself, the repair wasn't a big deal, but I still hadn't gotten around to determining if the vehicle needed any body work or just had cosmetic damage from the accident (or if I would have to spend thousands to repair). With my pay cut, we were extra motivated to invest in a car that used significantly less fuel. I got to buy my "dream car" and we are saving about $200/month in fuel costs. So that is very win-win.

Plus, it's nice to have a significantly nicer car now that I actually spend time in my car. All those years we drove older cars, meh, we never really drove that much. I am glad I saved my pennies for a time in my life where I am spending a lot more time in the car.

LOSSES:

Okay, so my gut reaction was to just use wins/losses, because I didn't like the word "fail". But, now that I am typing this out, I want to use the word fail.

FAIL:

**As an adult, I have never failed so miserably on the work/life balance front. It was definitely a FAIL.

I have no idea what in the heck. I suppose I feel like it was all completely out of my control, and not sure what else I could have done to set my life up to be any easier to deal with it all. So maybe "fail" is a strong word. But I just feel like I so completely failed on this front.

2019 will be a year of trying to find my balance again.

Edited: & to be clear, it was more than just WORK. It was "work" also in the sense of chores/obligations, etc. I suppose I said work/life balance because it seemed to start with that, but it has little to do with work at this point. I've always been a "raising kids and working full-time is more than enough" type and don't have any other commitments, but my friends and family have been going through such hard times, and life has been non-stop Murphy hell. I don't know if I've ever had so little down time during my entire life. It feels mostly out of my control. I felt this way when I was between jobs and two weeks off, because I just had a mountain of chores I am finally starting to have the time for (now in January). It's not all going to magically get better if I stop doing side work. It's just how life is going right now. I don't know how to fix it yet, but am trying.