2024 - A Wrap

• Dec 31, 2024
• Reflection, & Review
• 5 minutes reading time

Let's start with some of the highlights:

1. Tasmania – In April we headed to the Apple Isle to see some friends who also moved from Wagga at about the same time we left. It was a lovely time hanging out with them - especially seeing our girls enter 'besties' mode. They've been friends since daycare, and it was so great to see how quickly and easily they slotted back. Tassie is such a gorgeous place. I'd forgotten how small it all is - only 570,000 people in the state!
2. Music—There was a bit of a resurgence in music over the year. It started with seeing Mr Bungle, a heat-stress-inducing WOMAD, a new guitar, TISM, and finishing with playing at DaveFest '24. I've been noodling away since we moved to Adelaide, and it was great to actually play with others. It is also the perfect motivation for next year and playing more.
3. Kitchen – It was a saga and an ordeal, but in the end, we have a kitchen where everything works, everything has its place, and it looks good!
4. Goals & Direction – I really did start the year off in a worse place than I had. I took all of January off to sort myself out and took the time and effort to work through the Focus Course which helped me find my way. Over the year, it's paid dividends in helping to orient me to what's going on, and I feel like I have more focus on where I need to be.

On the professional side of things:

1. Learning Types - I focussed some time and effort this year on building out the work around the learning types, which has been underway for a while. I set up the website, made icons, and then started to work on workshops and activities aimed at utilising them in different learning and teaching practices.
2. OE Global - It was a great conference full of international participants. I got to present my work on a Learning Design System and catchup with Alan and Grant - and enjoy some Queensland humidity.
3. Career not Job - One of the things that came out of the Focus Course was detangling my career from my job. They aren't the same thing and often don't align. The job is something you get paid for, but your career is something you pursue that gives you value. I assumed they were one and the same and linked them together, so when the job was going pear-shaped, so too was my career. In retrospect, I was putting too much into my job and not enough into my career. That was something good to come to terms with this year.

Growth and Change

In reflection, this was a year of personal growth and change. I finished last year on a downer, but this year, I've been on the up. I've made steady progress on embedding and changing practices around how I live and do things. There have been plenty of external changes and chaos, but I've felt more equipped to face them.

I felt good about exploring my creative side this year – designing, making, and playing. I know I need to balance working and consuming with creating and producing output. Getting that balance right is always tricky, particularly when things get tough, but I know working towards it is important for my mental and physical health.

Merger, Merger, Merger

This year, my work was almost exclusively focused on the merger (the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia are merging into Adelaide University). I've really tried to influence things positively but have struggled with the organisation's hierarchical nature and how it's been structured for this change. The lack of collaboration has been telling, and trying to move away from a deeply collaborative model of work to a ... whatever you want to call what is happening... has not gone well for me.

I could have had far more of a positive impact had I been able to influence decisions along the way. Instead, we are now stuck with a complete mess (one that I did predict and have been trying ever so hard not to say, "I told you so"). I've been neutered as a manager and am unable to really support my team through the process, although some how that's still an expectation despite not being able to adjust anything about how they work other than approving leave.

I am wondering if 2025 will be the year that a some industrial action takes place. There is a lot going on and a lot expected to happen in the coming year. If I'm honest, I'm kind of looking forward to the fireworks.

Wrapping Up

This year ended with the completion of a pretty big project. Over three years of work went into planning, establishing, designing, developing, and creating two fully online programs. I saw my team expand from two to six and faced the many, many challenges involved in creating courses on a strict timeline and short timeframe—not once or twice, but 38 times.

From my career perspective, pulling everything together has been rewarding. I've grown into managing and developing a team, making good products, and stepping away from the doing side of things to take on a management role.

From a job perspective, it's not gone the way I had hoped for most of the time. I've never had any recognition of the work that went into making this a success. I've not formed part of anyone's strategic planning, in most cases, completely ignored and overlooked. There's been no progression of the role nor support for growth - despite being here for 5 years.

This incompatibility between career and job has forced me to spend a lot of the year contemplating if the two match up in any way, shape or form. With the way things have gone with the merger, they have only diverged more and more. So at the end of the year - despite wrapping up the biggest and longest project that I have worked on (from start to the very fucking finish) - it's felt completely underwhelming.

My People

With all that said - I love who I work with.

I love my team (in all its various iterations).

I work with a bunch of talented and good people. I love that they challenge me. I love that they see the world differently. I love that they bring themselves to work. I love that they feel comfortable to be themselves. I love being in a room, shooting the shit, but also working through some horrendously complex situations together. There is a great sense of camaraderie, which probably comes from shared trauma, but it is good to go to work and connect with these people. I found my people.

In this video, I spoke a bit about the people aspect of my work. It was all off the top of my head in an interview style - but I think it got to the point really well.

Getting the right group of people together and creating an environment that fosters collaboration - that's when the magic happens.

• Tim Klapdor
• Adelaide, Australia
• & posts