Most of these annual wrap-up blog posts are about the incremental changes from the year before. Slight changes, evolutionary changes. This year the change was bigger and more drastic than that.

Sure, I still did a lot of the same things: watched movies (47, up from 44 in 2015) and bought new music (20, down from 22 in 2015), and I actually read a few books this year (3) unlike 2015 when I read a grand total of zero. My consumption continued to drop in another area: I lost even more weight, getting down to my lowest level since 2001. Low enough that I could, and did, break out some of my favourite old t-shirts.

Meanwhile, work continued to dominate the year, especially early on. The thing I’d been working on so hard in 2014 and 2015 launched in January, and through the end of March it consumed pretty much every waking hour I had. It was a huge success, though, so it all seemed worth it.

I somehow managed to escape the office long enough for vacations to Costa Rica and Rwanda (with a stop in Amsterdam), and work jaunts to Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa twice, and Vancouver. I got away to Montreal two more times in the fall as well.

Of course, there was also a lot going on right here at home in Toronto, like hosting a New Year’s Eve party, seeing Jane Goodall speak, a Jays game, the Session craft beer fest, watching The Hip’s final concert in friends’ backyard, TIFF, visits from brother #1 and brother #2, a frigid MLS Cup final, and some live music.

I tried some new restaurants too, both in Toronto (Batch, Bar Hop 2, Pukka, The Wren, Buca Yorkville, The Gabardine, Thirsty & Miserable, and Little AAA) and out (Modern Steak, Charcut, The Catch, and Beer Revolution in Calgary; Redstone in Beamsville; Heaven in Kigali; Little Collins in Amsterdam; Modavie, Bocata, Brouhaha, and Mamm Bolduc in Montreal; Maison Publique, L’Amère A Boire, Pullman, and Station Ho.st also in Montreal; Union 613 in Ottawa; Bières et Compagnie, Pub Pit Caribou, and Brasserie Boswell in Montreal; and Gotham in Vancouver.

I did manage to get outside the city a little bit too, to Bat Lake in March, Niagara with brother #2 and my sister-in-law in the summer, and Eigensinn Farm with friends. Nothing after the summer though. After the summer things got complicated.

Without getting into too much detail, Nellie and I separated in September after being married more than twelve years. That was a pretty big, jarring event which threw the rest of the year into some disarray — for the last four months or so it’s been moving and lawyers and finances and such. Again, I won’t get too into the details, but in a year where people were selling 2016 Sucked tshirts, this was one more very tough event close to home.

And so a year that started off with so much success and celebration ended in a lot of chaos, making the year feel very bipolar. But there were some very silver linings too, which I’ll talk about some other time. For now, I’m going to wave goodbye to 2016, and not be the least bit sad to see it go.

If last year was a year of adjustments, 2014 was a year where the focus shifted entirely. Our jobs become the dominating, and sometimes sole, draw on our attention.

Of course, we still consumed a lot, in all meanings of the word. Yes, we watched movies, but only 51 new ones. (That would probably seem like a lot to some people, but it’s well off our average.) My consumption of music fell considerably; I bought only 7 albums this year, compared to 20 last year and 14 the year before. There are plenty waiting to be evaluated on my hard drive, but my habit of listening to new music on my (short) daily commute has given way to a number of podcasts. I did, however, read 8 books this year…that might not seem like a lot to some people, but it’s more than I usually do, since my attention is typically drawn to hundreds of tweets, news feeds, and status updates every day. Just one more area of focus this year, I suppose.

Shifting from personal consumption to mass enjoyment, we did manage to engage in a few cultural and sporting events around Toronto this year. It was a paltry showing at both Hot Docs and TIFF, though we did get invited to our first-ever TIFF Gala. I hit up a Raptors game with some work partners on Nelson Mandela night, and attended a timely screening of Selma with the director and lead actor at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. We bought ticket packages for the Toronto portion of the World Juniors, much of which is being played in the final days of 2014. We made a trek with some colleagues out to Stratford to watch A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We also packed a number of events — a Raptors game, the Alex Colville exhibit at the AGO, a Bob Dylan concert — into a long weekend with my parents in town.

We celebrated a few things too: Nellie’s 38th birthday, more Olympic hockey gold, Nellie’s friends’ wedding in Oakville, a new mayor (well, we didn’t celebrate the new one so much as sigh with relief that the old guard didn’t win), Christmas, and on a less significant note, a new phone at last.

We sampled quite a few Toronto eateries this year, some new, some old but new to us: Carbon Bar, Monk Kitchen, Campagnolo, Stock, Parts & Labour, Boxcar Social, Patria (twice), Byblos, Pizzeria Libretto, and Michael’s On Simcoe. Beer became a focal point for our outings this year as well: festivals like Session, Toronto Beer Week, and Cask Days; visits from the Murphy Girls; and multiple hangs with friends who love beer as much as we do.

We did somehow find free weekends to get ourselves out of the city: twice to Niagara, twice to Bat Lake, and once to Prince Edward County. We got really out of the city six times this year: three times to Nova Scotia (twice to the family farm, once to Halifax for a weekend), once to Ottawa to surprise a friend for her birthday, once to Las Vegas (I spoke at a conference for the first half of the week; Nellie flew down and joined me for a long weekend at the end), and once to British Columbia for a week in the Okanagan and Vancouver. I also made flew to Miami and NYC for other conferences and speaking engagements; Nellie didn’t tag along for those.

Granted, it wasn’t all fun in the sun in 2014. I felt disappointed with the state of the world when I had to fend off a crazy guy from some girl I didn’t know, and when some racist homophobe ended my gaming hobby (both of which happened around the time gamergate was in the news), and when overdose and suicide took two actors who played roles which meant a lot to me. But those were all minor things that didn’t really have a lasting impact on us. Nothing like the sudden, heartbreaking loss of Michael. We really thought we had him for a few more years. He left behind a big hole in our daily lives. We still think about him all the time.

If you look at the list of trips above you might notice something: we had to abandon our plan, formed in 2012, to hit all seven continents before we turned 40. When I started my new job in October of last year and began lining up my two-year plan against the optimal time to travel to places like Antarctica, it became clear we couldn’t do everything before my fortieth birthday. So we shifted the cut-off to be before Nellie’s fortieth birthday, but when Nellie got a promotion to a bigger role earlier this year, we realized there was no way to pull that off either. The original plan for this year was to go somewhere — anywhere — in Asia, but work has been so busy for both of us that we couldn’t even plan such a thing, let alone get away for the 2-3 weeks necessary. A week in BC, where we were still in easy email contact, was as far as we could manage. And next year doesn’t look to be any more open.

We certainly wanted these new jobs, but they’ve required even more of our focus than we’d expected, and so…the other big ambitions take a back seat for a while. It’s the height of first world problems that our plans for more exotic travel will have to wait until our early forties, so we can’t complain too much. All we can do is focus on the task ahead and be patient.

.:.

Cover photo by Dani Ihtatho, used under Creative Commons license

I suppose it’s the custom that I begin these annual report posts with a rundown of how many movies I saw (65) and how many albums I bought (20) and how many books I read (just 3) this year, and how that compares to last year (54, 14, and 4 respectively). It also raises the question of what conclusions can be drawn from those numbers, if any. I’m leading toward none, other than that I’m prone to over-quantifying things. And in that spirit, I considered figuring out how many TV shows I consumed, but that would be beside the point: it’s the quality of what I watched this year that was so outstanding, not the quantity.

I do enjoy going back through the year, though, and recounting the things we did, like events in and around Toronto: a Game Of Thrones exhibit, a Leafs game where I got to see Sidney Crosby play live, another Leafs game which I saw live with my dad (his first live game in 49 years), a few Hot Docs screenings, Woofstock, the 3rd annual Session beer festival, Canada Day / Pride weekend, the city’s massive summer rainstorm, the Roundhouse craft beer fest, a special screening of Jaws at the Lightbox, our 12th consecutive TIFF, Nuit Blanche, a Thanksgiving feast, the ice storm, and of course the ongoing saga of our idiot mayor.

We also tried a number of TO dining establishments for the first time: Richmond Station, Bellwoods Brewery, Le Paradis, Woods, Carisma, Monk’s Table, Bar Isabel, Hawthorne, and George. Richmond Station has since become a favourite, and I felt Bar Isabel earned it’s reputation among the top new restaurants in Canada. We did manage to host a few events at our place too, naturally centered around food and drink, like Bachelderannalia, a visit from the Thirphy girls, and a big dinner with our friends Matt & Kaylea (and assorted others).

We busted out of the city quite a lot this year too: Niagara-on-the-Lake twice and Grimsby twice, with winery visits part of all four trips. We also had a memorable dinner at Eigensinn Farm in Singhampton, and made three trips to Minden: Bat Lake twice, and Matt & Kaylea’s epic wedding weekend in September.

We didn’t do as many weekend trips out of the province/country as last year, but we did visit Boston for the first time, and Nova Scotia for a week, before making the big trip to Africa. That the Africa excursion was probably our best trip ever made up for the lack of other small side trips. Of course, I did still take a few trips for work, notably Phoenix, Chicago, San Francisco, and two more hops to Boston.

But all of that is really the same as last year, with slight variations in frequency or destination. Perhaps the three things which defined this year more than any other were the slight adjustments in our lives:

1. Getting used to our new condo. By New Year’s Eve last year we’d barely settled in to the new place, and hadn’t gotten around to many of the enhancements we’d planned. We still haven’t gotten around to many of them, but it at least now feels like home in that unfinished way that everybody’s first real adult home does.
2. Sonny’s passing. When a 20-pound ball of medication and affection who demands constant attention for ten straight years isn’t there one morning, it changes the atmosphere in your home. Five months later we’re all still adjusting.
3. I left my company after 14 years, and started a new job. Two months in, I’m still getting used to this latest shift. It was a good move for me, and still roughly the same work rather than a career overhaul…but it’s definitely an adjustment.

There were other, more subtle things. I just realized this week that I haven’t been out to see live music all year, the first time that’s happened since I moved to Toronto. I also realized that my social networking contributions have slowed to a crawl, maybe out of overload, maybe out of lack of interest. I’ve already begun turning off a bunch of it and reconnecting with physical things, like books and outside air. The start of next year’s trend, maybe?

.:.

Cover photo by Kai Chan Vong, used under Creative Commons license