Year-End Thoughts
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2020: Fuck it, Forget it, and Forge ahead
My annual year-end post, somewhat subdued in comparison to other years.
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2019: A long walk, and then a run
This year has been a series of pleasant surprises, which has been a real relief after a couple years with many good things in them but also many painful, unpleasant surprises. It has been disruptive, and healing, and energizing, in ways I could never have expected. A kick in the ass In February, after five incredible, successful, stressful years, the Distillery District eliminated my position. It was initially shocking, and for about an hour after I got the news I was entirely spun. But once the reality set in – five months of severance, and a bit of a rest – it felt a bit like winning the lottery. I’d…
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Take my hand, 2018, we’ll make it I swear.
This year has been weird; sometimes extremely bad and hard, but still not a bad year, overall. Endings and some beginnings I feel like 2017 has been a series of endings, personally. My boss of several years left, and that changed the shape of my job in more ways than I can count; it’s almost like having a new job in a very familiar setting. It was stressful, at first, but there have been some good changes, too. I moved out of the apartment I’d shared with Tim Walker since 2013, and into another apartment in the same building with my new roommate, Robin Leblanc (aka The Thirsty Wench). It’s…
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Let’s do this, 2017
By all accounts, 2016 has been a pretty miserable year for most people. I haven’t been immune to that, but there have been loads of good things, too, and I’d much rather think about them! In the Winter, I started running regularly, and was pretty close to being able to run 5K when Bronchitis hit and put the brakes on my running for a while. This is kind-of a big deal for me, as running (or any other physical activity besides dance) isn’t something I’ve ever been into, and it’s nice to have a milestone like that. I’m hoping to hit that goal in 2017, if only so that I…
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Sparkle and Shine, 2016
The year opened stressfully but closed fairly peacefully. Along the way, it was packed full with projects, music, friends, and good hard work. At the beginning of the year, I had no thought of joining the Board of Directors for the Shelter Valley Folk Festival, nevermind becoming the Chair, but as things unfolded, it was clear that if we didn’t all jump in and pull together, the festival was done. So we did, and I couldn’t be more proud of the amazing people, both on the Board and in the community generally, who worked so hard and with such a good will to keep this beloved small festival running. Work…
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Not too shabby, 2014!
Not a bad year, not an amazing year. A good, solid year without major setbacks, 2014 has been pretty good to me. The biggest achievement of my year, without a doubt, was achieving my long-held goal of paying off my student loans. It happened in October. After a decade of confusion, ((To this day, I’m not quite certain what my total amount loaned was – the system changed several times during my undergrad, leading to Federal and Provincial loans all over the place.)) getting the run-around from various banks and student loan services, and low-paying contract work in Peterborough, I finally had the kind of dependable income that allowed me…
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2014: Shining like a National Guitar
In my year-end wrap-up for 2012, I wrote the following: I’ve cut my commitments down to almost nothing in preparation for – well, I don’t know exactly. But if something comes along and I need to leap, I’ve got nothing tying me to where I am. I could go tomorrow. And I want to. Less than a month later, I was scrambling to find somewhere to live in Toronto, and scrambling to wrap up my remaining commitments in Peterborough, as I leapt into a new job and a new life in a new city. Despite my belief that I was ready to go, I wasn’t – it was hard. Leaving…
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Lucky 2013
Oh 2012, you pretty little thing. You haven’t been good to many people I know, but you’ve been pretty good to me, with a few notable exceptions. Sad things In fact, 2012 started off pretty badly. My sassy, flirty, funny Nana Cynthia died in January. I’ve been trying to write about it in all of the intervening months, and haven’t been able to get anything meaningful down, but it’s a loss that our whole family is feeling, still, very deeply. Mum’s spent a lot of this year scanning Nana’s WWII diaries and posting them, with photos and transcripts, on her website, which are really interesting reading. Nothing in the early…
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Beauty On, 2012
It’s become a tradition of sorts for me to write something here on December 31, a sort of summing-up and looking forward I would have scoffed at myself for doing a few years ago. But, as arbitrary as it is to do this on a particular date, it feels useful for me to say to myself ‘this is what I’ve accomplished, and this is what I hope to do now.’ This has easily been one of the busiest years of my life, and I’m thankful to have come through it with relative equanimity. A busy year at the museum meant that I’ve run more discrete events this year than I’ve…
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Movin’ on Up: C’mon lucky 11!
I’m always kind-of at a loss when it comes to these year-end things; do I make lists? Do I look back, or forward? It’s hard to strike the right note. There’s a lot on my mind these days. Architecture. Â Cholera. The way cities disintegrate and rejuvenate, like fields cycling through harvest years and fallow years. How to be in the right place in the right time. I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, which was a great read and chock-full of fascinating ideas. I’ll probably write more about it in the future.
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2010: Ch-ch-changes
The first decade of this century has been filled with challenges – some of my own creation, others external – and the last couple of years have been really focused on figuring out what I’m doing wrong and how to correct it. But that’s not to say that the decade that saw myself and my friends complete and debut a feature-length film, complete my B.A. at Trent, start and run the MoHo Music Revue, explore my arts admin side via the Peterborough Arts Umbrella, and also working up through the ranks at the Peterborough Folk Festival to become Artistic/Executive Director hasn’t seen any triumphs; I’ve worked hard, had loads of…
