Heya January People

A fresh year and for us that means a fresh new guest blogger to introduce you to!  It gives me great pleasure to welcome Amy Gittoes,  Regional Sales Manager at Climalife, who kicks off the 2025 blogs for us.  Thank you Amy! 

It is a bit late being released because I had the flu in the middle of January.  Great start to the year!  But it is beaten now and I am getting back to normal.  If you have had it my loyal reader you have my sympathies.  Anyhoo enough of me as I hand over to Amy

New year - new me?

As each new year begins I am thrown into reviewing my achievements for the past year whilst simultaneously looking ahead to the following one. Whilst reviewing achievements can be cathartic, I often find that it increases my anxiety – why was I not better this year? Am I where I need to be? More importantly, am I where I should be?

2024 has been rather turbulent in terms of both my family life and my career. 2023, it was even worse! So, am I where I ought to be?

In February 2023, following redundancy from my long-standing employer and family business, I was thrown into the unknown. To complicate matters further, it happened just as I was finishing my maternity leave with my third child. Financials aside (if you have ever been made redundant you will understand my pain) it led to some impressive self-reflection. What am I any good at? What can I earn money doing? What can I do that will both meet my financial goals whilst also creating the passion I so desire for? After all, that’s what the last decade has taught me, I need to love what I do to be truly engaged and effective in the role I am doing. After much deliberation I decided to leave the industry, it was an agonising decision. You are wondering where this is leading! Bear with me! In June 2023 I took the decision to move into a completely different industry, a local company to me, something which at the time was important, I had a young family, and my husband was travelling a lot. As the year ended, I carried out my annual reflection. Was I where I ought to be?  Six months had passed since making the decision to leave, and it became quite clear that whilst I loved my job, something just wasn’t right. Now there is a long story behind this entire situation which I will save for another day. My reflections drew me back to that underlying question: what am I truly passionate about?

This wasn’t a decision that I was going to make because my annual review of life was taking place, this needed to be something that took time and true thought to decide. I didn’t compile my traditional list of achievements or accomplishments, what I did instead was truly reflect on the importance of passion to be successful. Probably more importantly a sense of belonging and value, something that the past six months had genuinely been lacking. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t really take stock of the year, after all where I was did not align with my true measure of success.  What I concluded was that my experience within refrigeration for the past decade amounted to something that I wasn’t able to quantify, it was nothing to do with promotions, sales targets or even knowledge, it was a deep seated desire to share something with others; a true passion for delivering the best outcome in a subject that I had become so fond of alongside others who also shared that.

So, here I am! Back in the industry I decided to take a step away from for almost a year. “How will I measure myself this year?” I hear you ask. Well, time will tell. I will reflect on the year, after all I am a firm believer that reviewing is always the essence of development.  However what will be different for me this year is that I can be confident that I am where I should be, in an industry where I have a sense of belonging with a passion shared amongst my peers.