This is the first Year Note that I ever write, and I think a good place to start is a bit of context.
It had been the previous year when I had decided to study counselling and work towards a career change. At that time, my marketing career was in the ruins after a couple of failures and a complete loss of motivation. My cognitive capabilities also didn’t seem to be with me anymore, which I attributed (in part wrongly) to this loss of motivation and the way I was confronting my past traumas.
Things looked difficult in January, although I was pleased with the way in which I was working to take things under control.
Twelve months later I can see that it has been a wonderful year and I have managed to achieve a lot of goals I had set for myself. I have gained even more clarity on my plans moving forward and generally enjoyed myself a lot more, even if my life isn’t particularly fun (as my dreams keep reminding me).
Making it to Brighton Uni
Making it to the Brighton Uni postgrad in Counselling and Psychotherapy seemed both the ideal path for my psychotherapy training, as well as another potential failure.
In fact in the previous year, even the prospect of sorting my paperwork seemed a tall order. And apparently, only 25% of applicants are offered a place in this course.
Come early 2025 though, I had managed to stay focused, make my application and train myself to make sure I really wanted this and that I could do it. I did a lot of reading and writing on this website, and designed some of my early work (which I now dislike, but people still appreciate, like my Carl Rogers 7 stage process or this Transactional Analysis poster)
I had my interview in February and after a long wait, in May, I found I had been offered a place.
All this time – almost a year from setting my eyes on it to being offered the place – I referred to this as my most important goal. Perhaps it had been too dangerously important.
I wrote my first essay this summer (on authenticity, more or less this one) And by September I was actually going to class.
As we approach the end of the year, I am still ecstatic to have gone onto this path, as challenging as it has been. I also feel very sure I want to do this for a living.
Overcoming traumas
Part of psychotherapy training is uniquely about dealing with your own issues, learning about yourself and committing to a personal development plan. I say uniquely because doctors aren’t required to be healthy and teachers aren’t required to keep learning. But because of how psychotherapy works, it is for us (at least for the humanistic kind).
It’s not like I didn’t want to overcome some of my traumas anyway. This year I was still carrying a lot of anger and resentment about some of the events in my past. Even though I had been to therapy very successfully between 2023 and 2024, I was still furiously living in that past. However, I could see I was getting better and had to be patient, looking at thought as a way to understand whether progress was being made.
Eventually, time became the biggest healer. I recognise that my habit of walking to the same tree also had an impact as it was silence (and its twin sister, music) and meditation. I think it also helped embracing new hobbies such as drawing/designing which, as well as being inherently therapeutic, demonstrated I could rewrite what’s in my destiny.
I can’t say I have completely healed from my traumas. Part of it will probably stay with me forever. But I am very happy about how it feels to be me once I have done all this processing and re-engineering of how I want my life to be.
As a recent new friend asked me the other day “have you always had this resilient spirit about you?”
No, I haven’t.
Turning marketing work around
My money-making marketing career was in ruins in 2024 but I have slowly started to regain my confidence and my abilities. Slowly, and not in a linear fashion, this year I managed to really turn things around.
This meant I strengthened my relationship with my key client Public Digital, where I am contracted part-time to support their marketing team, predominantly with digital and content design projects.
This has been huge. It has turned around my financial position, even if temporarily, and allowed me to live without a lot less stress.
And I have done some good work! I love how this role uses my wide range of skills and knowledge without making me exposed to a full-time leadership position. And I love working part-time, flexibly and with a lot of smart people in an interesting company.
My design work
Last year, 2024, I decided to learn design. And by that I mean to develop myself artistically, learn graphic design fundamentals and produce things.
It made sense for a lot of reasons: I fancied it, I had a lot of transferable skills and existing knowledge of it, I wanted an outlet for my visually creative brain and I had a vague intuition it could be an interesting companion to my psychotherapy studies.
I have of course improved a lot as a designer in 2025, although I have to admit I hardly have the time to do it. And most of my work is to produce psychotherapy stuff, like graphics for this website.
This year I also produced a couple of simple graphs for Mick Cooper’s upcoming “Essential Research Findings in Psychotherapy” book, which will be published in 2026 in its second edition. I love having early access to Mick’s seminal book on therapy effectiveness, and working with him to visualise his work. I will write about this when the book comes out.
We also made an early tentative pact to write a book together, which I have been really quiet about (until now, although burying this here is probably still quiet enough). With a bit of luck, next year we will be working on a contract, although the book itself, if it is ever going to happen, won’t happen until 2027 or later.
One of the most lovely things happening this year is that I am starting to appreciate long term vision and consistent work. This is new to me.
For this, I have been working on sharpening a consistent visual signature style. I think it needs a lot of development, but I already started getting it out on this site.
500 monthly website users
All this consistent reading, writing and designing that became this website is going very well. I had my first customer (a lovely woman in the US who bought all my digital downloads) and have been steadily growing to a peak of over 500 users a month.
Again, it shows the value of consistent work. I am not losing my shit to get more users, but it’s nice to see strangers coming to my website and staying a long time reading things.
Amaia turns 6
Another year, another chance to grow as a parent and to enjoy the relationship with my lovely daughter Amaia. It’s also full of challenges, since I am on my own, busy and with sketchy health (more on that later).
Things got reasonably easier with Amaia starting in year one without much issue after the summer, which I survived indeed.
Last month she turned 6 and we celebrated at Monkey Bizzness. I was in charge of the cake and I didn’t disappoint (with its project management, rather than manufacturing, of course)
Health deteriorating and being celiac
My health has been and continues to be one of the biggest let downs in my life. I have been reasonably unwell for a few years now: fatigued, in pain, as well as stressed and quite down.
I developed a chronic tonsillitis in May that hasn’t really left me, which relates to some digestive problems I have also been having. All this malaise has turned out to be related to gluten allergy, which I discovered having only towards the end of the year. And since despite trying to be on a strict gluten free diet I keep making mistakes, and since celiac disease takes a long time to recover from, I am still feeling officially like – to use the technical term – crap.
Buying a flat – yay?
Recovering financially after a couple of bad years and gaining confidence in the stability of my current income allowed me to secure a mortgage and buy a flat.
Except with these things you are not in, until you are in.
It has been a few long months of legal process. It has already taken longer than expected and unfortunately I won’t be moving into my new flat this year. This will be for the yearnote 2026.
Additionally, some complications have emerged with the building that are putting things into question. Overall a really stressful little number I hope to solve next year.
To 2025!
I am really thankful for how this year has turned out, even if it has been hard, taken a lot of work and still some things have left unresolved. It shows life is messy and there is no grand plan or cosmic justice, just “doing and choosing”.
Thank you to all my friends who have supported me in every way they have, and my lovely daughter for being who she is and nothing else than that.
