The 2017 Roast Toast

So this is it. The beginning of a new year. To some that would probably be a sigh of relief, because let’s be honest 2016 wasn’t exactly the cliché answer to the hopes of “better than 2015” or “the best year ever!” globally.

We’ve lost a good few famous people this year (owing to the baby boomer generation starting to reach and exceed the general life expectancy) arguably half of the UK were disappointed with the Referendum result on our EU membership and the populous of the US who didn’t vote for Donald Trump with the result of the election for the next president over there. We’ve also been exposed to more news on the Middle Eastern conflicts, particularly with #Aleppo making a trend on Twitter as well as some of the scarier demonstrations of the so called Islamic State on the world.

But it wasn’t all bad! There were many good that occurred too. For those that supported Trump and Brexit, congratulations on the history defining moments. For Children in Need, Revelmode, Project For Awesome and many more, congratulations on raising phenomenal amounts of money for various charities to help those around the world that need that extra bit of support right now. Congratulations to Felix Kjellberg (aka Pewdiepie) for continuing to define history for the internet’s largest video platform by reaching and surpassing 50 Million Subscribers to your content (51,766,646 at the time of writing) and maintaining the most subscribed individual on ‘popular’ social media at the moment (feel free to correct me otherwise).

I feel proud of my own achievements this year, from coordinating my first place to live outside of work, relationships & university accommodation from start to finish (with continued thanks to my wonderful parents and their amazing partners for the kind help in getting set up) to getting back onto the internet and setting up a place to share content with you all again (as well as setting the crazy task of trying to run 4 regular blogs on different topics!), to participating in providing live sound support and mixing advice for our largest filmed multimedia project to rebuild part of our Mandatory training for staff using our in house designed “Living the Values” series of videos with help from professional actors and scriptwriters, to setting up, compiling and running the largest live multimedia project we’ve done to date for Lancashire Teaching Hospitals we | awards 2016 and working with our partners at Pure AV to help put on a great show for our Workforce and Education Directorate, to finishing and now polishing up my completely overhauled and now blended training programme for AV compliance within the Health Academy (that may only expand further in scope and levels), to sitting here right now and writing out this essay of a post and hoping it doesn’t sound totally lame for and end of year post (that ironically is published the day after).

But that’s just me.

I sincerely hope that whatever your plans are tonight be it partying with friends, family, the TV or total strangers, or indeed just going to bed and waking up in the new year, I really hope you have a wonderful evening and I wish you all… (not the best, cause many of us said that last year and that didn’t go so well!) … a prosperous and productive new year with opportunity, hope and happiness and that you can look back on 2016 with the same or greater pride that despite all that has happened over the last 12 months you made your mark on the world and wrote some history of your own.

Here’s to 2017, I’ll see you on the other side

Mike

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