Happy First Anniversary to me!

It’s a full year since I registered pcijourney.com, and what a year it’s been. At that time, there were some people in the world who’d heard of COVID-19, but most people were oblivious. Certainly I had no idea what was coming for us.

Birthday Cake!

The year of COVID really changed what I was doing, and what I was able to do. Working in the payments space, what I saw was that business continued, and there were no layoffs. But there was lots of uncertainty, and hiring was effectively paused for about 6 months from March through October. We ended up having to do more with less to keep the show on the road, as our hiring plans were disrupted.

Lots of people at our company’s sales prospects were now working from home. We found ourselves doing a lot more initial pitches to people who were otherwise sitting in their home office twiddling their thumbs. Not too many of those have converted yet, but we’ve kept conversations going with many of them at a low level over many months. I think as purse strings finally loosen mid-late 2021 some of those big time investments will pay off, but it’ll be the result of a lot of time put in.

As the year dragged on, I put less time into this blog than I’d planned. Because I was working from home 100% of the time with no business travel, the lines between work and play got really blurred. I found myself in a state of constant background work, with the result that my personal time got squeezed without really noticing.

Looking to the future

I don’t really do new year’s resolutions, but I know that I need to be more conscious about what I spend my time on. Work needs to be done in more managed chunks, with time set aside for me. The ‘me’ time includes everything from spending more quality time with the family, to side projects like PCI blogging.

From my perspective, the best thing as we head out of this year is the news that there are multiple COVID-19 vaccines either approved, or close to approval. I’m going to be taking one as soon as I’m able, as it seems to me that the risk of complications from the vaccine are significantly lower than the risks of long-term complications from a COVID infection. God willing, in the second half of 2021 enough people will have immunity one way or the other that we can start returning to normal life again.

Here’s to a healthy and prosperous 2021!