First things first: Merry Christmas to everyone!

It’s been quite a year – yeah, this might sound a little weird as there’s still another week to go, but I want to get this blog post done now as it’s highly unlikely that I’ll find the time next week. The most obvious new development (looking at things from the perspective of the webmaster of this page) is that I got my own homepage. Yay! It’s been a project I wanted to start quite a while ago and I’m glad I eventually did in April. While I haven’t really taken (I want to avoid the term “found”) the time to keep this blog as up to date as I wanted it to be, I hope it was still able to entertain you from time to time and give you some updates about what’s happening in my life.

Speaking of which… back in April, when this whole thing went online, I was still employed by Upper Deck. After more than 4 years, this relationship came to an end in June and I had to look for a new job. It’s been the first time I had to look for a job and I want to thank all the great people who helped me writing applications, making connections, etc. Without all your help, this would not only have been infinitely harder, I think I would have also been a lot less successful.

Eventually, I was hired by Station54, a Berlin based company doing Community Management; mainly for Electronic Arts. At first, this had been an amazing job, but it eventually came to a close at the end of October (I blogged about this: 4 Months with BattleForge). Well, I learned a lot regardless and my CV looked a little better as I could then claim I had been working as an Event Manager, Community Manager, Translator, Author, Customer Service Rep and some more stuff. Seems like life turned into a hunt for fancy job titles…

In the past 2 months, I was looking for a job again and I’m glad that I can now tell you that I’ve found an awesome new opportunity! Starting January the 4th, I’ll be doing Online Marketing for smava. It’s the market leader in a pretty new field; it allows you to get a credit financed by other people rather than by a bank (in case you’re interested, you should check out the homepage: smava.de). As this is quite new for me as well, the employment is only of limited duration. However, if I do good, I can turn this into something permanent, so wish me luck (any tips are welcome!). I have to say this is quite an amazing Christmas present.

Fortunately, life’s not all about work. I’m more than happy that I spent the whole year with the same girl and I couldn’t be asking for more. In case you weren’t lucky enough to meet Wincy so far, stop by whenever you’re in Berlin and I’ll be glad to introduce her to you.

What else? Well, I not only kept up my work for the Card Master and the Kartefakt, I’m recently writing for an English magazine, the Yu-Gi-Oh! World, too! On top of that, I’m still writing weekly columns. While my Yu-Gi-Oh! column Unter den Hut geschaut ended (thanks to Upper Deck’s loss of the Yu-Gi-Oh! licence), I started a new World of Warcraft TCG column on Warcraft-TCG.de: Suppe für den soul. I also stepped in for another author and continued the column for players new to the WoW TCG: Der Versammlungsstein. So even when I was without a “real” job, I was rather busy.

All in all, it has been quite a year. I’m glad I was able to make new friends, spend so much time with my existing friends, have a blast playing the WoW TCG and that things turned out the way they did. I’m more than certain that 2010 will be even more exciting!

I’ll celebrate the turn of the years in Leipzig with my best friends and I hope you’ll also have a blast partying into the new year!