2016

2026 vs 2016

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Side by side photos of me in 2016 and 2026 (almost)

There seems to be some nostalgia for 2016 at the moment. It mostly seems to be about the music of 2016, but apparently it’s also because people have started putting filters on their TikTok videos like we used to with Instagram photos in 2016.

I did a review of 2016 at the time, so you can read that, I suppose. 10 years ago, our 10-year-old was, well, a newborn baby, and so whilst they were born in 2015, most of the first year of their life fell in 2016. So it was quite a memorable year for us in that sense.

2015 had been a big year – we’d bought a house, I passed my driving test and bought a car, and we became a family of three. So 2016 was more of a consolidation year, with Christine on maternity leave for the first half (and me having the whole of January off on paternity and annual leave). I changed jobs twice – securing a secondment doing timetabling in early February, and then moving to a new permanent role in August. I’m (essentially) still in that role now.

Our house that we bought in 2015 was (and to some extent still is) a work in progress, and so in 2016 we had a downstairs bathroom installed, along with a new boiler and a Nest thermostat – our first piece of smart home technology. And despite having a small child, we did manage some trips – I went to London twice, we had an overnight trip to Liverpool, we went to see two friends get married up near Durham and had a day out in Oxford.

The photo at the top is a then-and-now comparison; not having a newborn means I’m less tired, but I’m a little wider nowadays and need to wear glasses. Also, there’s quite the difference between the front facing camera on the iPhone 5S (2016) and the iPhone 13 Mini (2026).

So on the whole, at least for us, it was a good year. Although the Brexit referendum, Trump’s first election and all the celebrities who died that year were less good outcomes.

Hello 2016!

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Figureheads

Happy new year!

Christine spent the new year apart for only the second time since we met. Unfortunately, our little poppet had to go back into hospital on Wednesday, and so Christine stayed on the children’s ward overnight. They should be coming back home again today hopefully.

As is traditional, I check to see if I achieved my goals for 2015, and what I expect to do in 2016. So – how did I do?

  • Buy a house – yes, even if it did take most of the year!
  • Pass my driving test and buy a car – yes!
  • Go to the gym more – nope. In fact my gym attendance was even worse last year.
  • Go to two weddings – yes, and they were the two that we were expecting, unlike in 2014.
  • Go on an overseas holiday – no, although I did get to travel abroad for work instead.
  • Visit London and Bristol – we managed London in October, but Bristol eluded us this year.

Not bad, on the whole. I’m hoping that I’ll have time over the next four weeks to go to the gym during the daytime whilst I’m on paternity leave, when it’s a bit quieter, and be able to make it a habit again. We could also do with an overseas holiday, although our baby will need a passport first. We can’t order one until we register her birth, which we haven’t been able to do as the local register office has been closed over the Christmas period. We have an appointment booked for next week though.

Another thing Christine and I both need to do is clear our credit card debts, which together amount to a four figure sum. Once clear, we can start rebuilding our savings. Christine also needs to re-start her driving lessons, which she paused when she got too pregnant, and pass her theory and practical driving tests.

And we need to continue to work on our new house. There’s still quite a bit of painting to do downstairs, for which we’ve already bought the paint for but haven’t had the time to actually apply it to the walls. And we still have a lot of unpacking to do. Once we’ve saved up enough money, we’ll then look into turning our spare downstairs room into a cloakroom with a toilet and basin, and consider re-wiring the upstairs of the house.

But the main thing we want to do is spend us much time we can with our new baby.