Seasons come and go, markets move, react & retrench but every once in a while you get touched (more like hit) by a year that will mark you for life.
And so it was for 2009.
Admittedly, things were already quite bleak for us in December 2008, but it was in mid 2009 that this bleakness faded completely to black. Six months apart December 2008 and May 2009 had one thing in common. In the early parts of both months, I sat on my desk, looked down and cried. Because twice the change of seasons I had lost the one thing that keeps an owner and his enterprise going – hope.
In one way it was the year of the slide. It was the year the business all of us had spent six years building fell apart. But in another way it was also the year of hope and the year of spirit. While I had lost hope, the team that made Alchemy and the extended Alchemy family saved Alchemy. They made it possible for us to carry things forward one day at a time; that and the kindness of random strangers who carried and pushed and showed their faith in us when there was none to be found. It was their belief in us as a team, in us as a business that defibrillated us back to life. And the days turned to weeks, and the weeks to months, and the months to December; and it was December that turned to hope.
9th January 2010. A year and thirty four days after a bleak Friday afternoon in the dying month of a difficult year when all I had was bills and no hope, I can finally look out the window and see the road ahead. It is no longer dark, but bright; not despair, but life.
Thank you to the Horatios in our lives, for where would we be without you (you know who you are…)