My daughter is a “millennium baby,” so she is always the same age as the year. Last night, as the ball dropped, we congratulated her on her 11th birthday—and like every year, I reminisced about the worries we had in 1999 about the Y2K bug.
We weren’t extremists, but on a hospital bed with a baby on the way, we were more nervous about the potential Y2K problems than in retrospect we needed to be. Maybe our nervousness about Y2K was just a cover for our nervousness about raising children in such a complicated world. It isn’t easy. We make mistakes.
Toward the end of 2010, my work team launched a new news website. In retrospect, we basically just migrated our existing news site into a blog format, but I was nervous about many of the technical aspects and the timeline. We wanted it up and running when the New Year hit. And we succeeded!
But looking back, I think my nervousness about technicalities was just a cover for other worries. With all of the new work to do in social networking and video...and the mistakes I know I will make, a complicated work year lies ahead.
I’m planning to have my best year yet with all of the successes from 2010 a foundation for the challenges of 2011—both at work and at home. I wish you the same. My plan starts with gratitude—for my “millennium baby” and for all of my family, friends, and my amazing colleagues. Happy New Year!
