It is hard to believe that we are only a little over two weeks away from Christmas and a little bit over three weeks until we hit an entirely new year. Now I hate always saying “where has the year gone?” but really… “Where has the year gone?”. Worse still, for those that don’t know me, is that incongruous to these two yearly celebrations lays an altogether not so necessary event… another birthday. It is kind of like the pimple on the arse of what should otherwise be a week of fun and celebration with family and friends.
While I’m not really that upset by having to observe another birthday, it does more than any other day, give me pause to reflect on the year that I have had and boy has this last one just come out of nowhere…. If I were to choose a word to best describe this past year then it would be “Opportunity”. More opportunities have come my way in this one year than in the past 5 years in total. Truth be told, I had high hopes for this year, I came into it with an open mind, enthusiasm and dare I say it, the expectations of good things to come.
The year had barely wet it’s head when, out of the blue, I was contacted by a UK television production company to see if I would be interested in appearing on a upcoming coming television show that was currently about to start production. The premise of the show was to have a dozen adults filmed living in a house together, going on dates and generally interacted with each other in order to see whether love can blossom and relationships formed. The curve is that we would all have an adult child, living in a separate house, watching and guiding us through the process, hence the name of the show being “My Mum, your Dad’. My initial reaction was to say “thanks but no thanks’ but this year was about opportunity, my daughter was absolutely keen so it was a yes. I will probably do a full blog about my experience on the show but to cut a long story, I walked out of there not in love, but with 12 of the best friends I could have hoped for. Since it has aired so many doors, people and subsequent opportunities have opened up by saying yes to that.
Something that I am most proud of the year is the Launch of GT for Men, opened with my best friend Sean. It is the culmination of a lot of hard work, but its success has been beyond our expectations. While it is an opportunity of our own making, we could have simply had given up and said that it’s too hard and stayed in the same lane that we had been in. By taking the harder road, it has seen us launch a business with a range of products that we are proud of and one which has certainly found a receptive market for – not sure we could have asked for more to be honest.
Another year is just about upon us and I really don’t know what opportunities that it will bring, it will certainly see the growth of Gt For Men, but what else I have no idea and that in itself is exciting. What I do know is that unlike other years, no opportunity will go unanswered and I look forward to updating you all in twelve months from now.
