January 01, 2015 7:02PM
A Year In Review, and Looking To The Future
It's funny how much priorities can shift and change; things in your life and push things forward, and move things back, all without ever letting you know it's happening. You wake up one day, or lay down to go to bed and realize that everything is different, and you know, most of the time, I'm pretty okay with it. Traditionally in the past I would write about my year, naming my top three this and top three that, mention things of note and treat it like some kind of article, but I've found that that format is easy to start and hard to finish because it is a longer format, with structure - starts and ends, and it usually takes a full month to even complete. I thought that this year I would more just wing it, and just write whatever comes to mind.
Some Interesting Discoveries
I am old.
This is the first year where I've really noticed how old I'm getting, and I don't mean that in some dramatic, over the top kind of way, and I know that my Mom would say,you're not old, you still have many years ahead of youand I'm not debating that. But this was the first year where I started noticing things that were indicating to me (or screaming at me) that I'm just not that young anymore. For instance:
- I'm fat. No, I'm not fat, but I'm not a skinny little boy anymore. I like to think this is a combination of starting a desk job where I sit all day, purchasing a car and literally never walking anywhere except the door to my office, and stress eating induced by the stress of purchasing a home, a car, learning the drive, owning a dog, and day to day stuff where all combined equaled a large bowl of chips. I'm sure I'll touch on this more below.
- I'm sore. I wake up sore, I go to bed sore, my collar bone hurts all the time, my legs hurt, I ache a lot.
- I'm tired. Sometimes it's 6pm and my eyes are doing that scratchy, hard to keep open thing where all you want is to sleep. I remember a time when I would stay up until 2am every weeknight raiding in World of Warcraft and then wake up at like 8am and go to school or work. How the? I don't even understand. Now, I can barely get through a day off without needing a nap, and it's a real challenge! What is with that?
- More than ever, I don't want to do things. What exactly, you ask? Things. You ask me something, I'm betting my answer will be No, and I won't even need to think about it. Concert? Probably would rather stay home. Party? Never. I have no desire to socialize and am perfectly happy existing in my own home, in my own cricle of life (dog, wife, cats) and that itch to be around other people just doesn't exist (and perhaps never did).
- I've stopped thinking about what others are thinking. Almost entirely, I've stopped caring what other think. I've been pretty good at this in the past, living pretty free of the fear of others judgement, and it's been nice, but in the last couple years, and especially this last year, being aware of what others might think is something that I just didn't have the time or energy for. I've stopped caring about any form of social media to the point now where the only person I even care about reading about is Ally, and otherwise can just delete my facebook account, and on Twitter, I basically just read what Scott Johnson has to say. I just don't care what anyone thinks, not out of some kind of crusade to become better and more independant, but just because it doesn't happen, it doesn't enter my head, and the thought of caring, or even the thought of caring about other people, makes me feel tired.
I am boring
This is kind of linked to the above topic, and in fact, probably everything that follows will be, as getting old kind of encompasses your entire life, so it's kind of redundant to keep writing, but then there wouldn't be anything written, and that's boring. I'm boring. My idea of a fun night is to eat dinner, play an hour of a game while drinking coffee, and then watching a tv show or movie before having a bubble bath with a scented candle and going to sleep. Yes, although it does sound like I'm describing a typical night of a woman in her late forties, this is my dream day, and the best part is, I get to live it almost daily. I'm happy with my situation, in other words. I look forward to coming home, I look forward to seeing my wife, to eating a nice dinner, to sit with that wonderfully brewed, freshly ground coffee and log in to World of Warcraft (something I didn't think I would end up enjoying again) and that feeling of slipping into a bath that might be just a little too hot for your own good. These are good feelings, and I wouldn't have it any other way. These things may seem boring, but I survive on routine. I want every day to be the same because it helps my heart. It helps my soul, if those were a thing. I need it, real bad, and I do everything I can to keep it the same.I Miss Writing
I write in my head. I never stop, and it is always happening and any time I am alone, or it's quiet, I'm writing in my head. I've written about this before, but I will again, because that's what I do. Writing in your head is interesting, because most of the time, for most people, you have an internal dialogue, but it's kind of shapeless, and more ideas than actual words, but I am speaking, in my head, in dialoge that I could sit down and write. I'm essentially having a conversation with an invisible audience, using well thought out sentences and words, forming, shaping and refining ideas that I'd like to convey. Maybe I'm doing the dishes, and I'm writing in my head about doing the dishes, and how I feel about it, and what I'm seeing outside, and what I wanted to do afterwards. Maybe I'm going the bathroom, and I'm writing in my head about how I write in my head. These are things that happen, and there is one major issue with it: I don't write anymore. This is an issue because if I'm non-stop writing in my head, but I don't actually get to get it out of me, then that stuff is just circling around... where does that energy go? Maybe it goes into my anxiety pit. An anxiety pit is that undiscovered organ beside your stomach that fills with anxiety at all times, and never lets you sleep. It is fueld by not writing and the thought of being a failure when you have children.2014 Accomplishments
The year of 2014 may have been the single most productive year in the history of my life. It wasn't the plan, and it kind of snuck up on us, but this past year was just full of accomplishment, and achievements and success, and that's both awesome and terrifying. It's awesome because it's what we've worked for, and planned for, and tried to be responsible for, but on the other hand, you can't lose everything important to you, if you don't really have anything, and now we have things. I get anxious sometimes thinking about how good things are right now, and how the one direction to go is down, and I don't like that thought.We Bought A House
We went from living in a rented townhouse with a 8' by 10' backyard to living in our own five bedroom, four bathroom house with at least half an acre of land. It was one of the most stressful experiences in my life, to say the least, but it's done and over with now, and home ownership is not as scary as people may try to make you think. It's about as involved as renting, in that the process is very similar (at least for me). There is a problem, you a) ask someone who knows how to fix it b) fix it. Yeah, when we rented it something really, really bad happened, we could probably call the owner and he'd have to deal with it, but in my 30 years of renting, I had never experienced such a situation, and day to day issues, I fixed myself. Living in your own home has so many amazing benefits, including but not limited to:- Forced air furnace that you can keep at any temperature you want. No more baseboard heating, no more $400 winter hydro bills, no more having the heat controlled by the loud angry man living below you were you can hear casual conversations and semi-public shamings of bed wetters who really wanted to eat a banana. Just control, and control is a powerful feeling.
- No more running out of hot water. This benefit is specific to my situation, as my last rental had about enough hot water to fill one sink up, once a week, and going from that to a gas fueled, house sized hot water tank that can be set to be boiling hot and has yet to ever give signs of running out, it's pretty much heaven. Want to do laundry, run the dishwasher (spoiler alert) and run a full bath at the same time? Do it, without even thinking about it. When we first moved in, I would go and check on my bath as it was filling, every one minute, to ensure that the hot water hadn't run out, because it was how I had to manage it in the old house. I would run the water until it ran out of warmth, and that was how it was decided how full my bath would be. It took a little while to break out of that thought process, and now I just let it run unattended until I get bored of waiting for it to fill.
- Peace and quiet. Not living in the town house complex, not living in a city, not living near a city, these are all things that contribute to our peace and quiet. You hear a car once and awhile drive by, but it's a comforting sound as they speed by at least thirty over the limit, but you don't hear drunk middle aged single Mom's with white wine at 10am, or entire extended families playing full contact sports in the drive way around the cars, you just see nature, and trees, and grass, and leaves, and you see stars in the sky. It's not lonely, it's wonderful.
- Feeling like a man. This one is interesting, and I may elaborate later.
We Bought A Car
All of our major events depending on each other; they were an interdependant series of events that if one of the events failed, everything would fail. We bought a car so we could buy a house, and we bought a house because we could buy a car, and so on. We bought a car because we wanted to live in between Chatham and London, which would require driving. Even if that hadn't been the case, taking the bus into my mid-life was not something I was very thrilled about, and it was something I wanted to stop. In order to buy the car, I needed to learn how to drive and get my license, which I did in a matter of about two months from start to test. Buying a car opened up a new level of freedom for me that I had never experienced before. Being able to go anywhere at any time without any kind of wait, or not having to sit beside some urine soaked homeless man, or wait for the bus in the cold beside a man who had just seconds earlier squatted, ripped his pants down and had explosive dierreah all over the sidewalk. I could go from my desk at work to my car in the parking lot, drive home, get out and go right inside, on my own time schedule. Stopping at the grocery store, or going to Target for something I wanted to pick up was completely okay, and easy to do, and it felt so good. It's hard to believe how quickly I learned how to drive, and how it now feels as if I've been driving forever, but it just goes to show you that I do have determination and strength somewhere inside me, that I occasionally have to pull out, like once every few years.I Got A Job
It's strange to think that at this time last year I was still working at Windermere without any idea of looking or finding a new job. Time moves fast, and I'm understanding that more and more as I grow older. I finished school, and was working at Windermere for slightly above minimum wage, with zero chance to move up, with zero chances for raises or promotions. It was the definition of a dead end job. It's funny though, because dead-end jobs have a way of tricking you. You see, you get to be really good at a job after a year or two there... after seven years, you're really good at that job. By being really good at the job, you forget that you don't have to do that thing. You feel like only you could do it, or that leaving would be too much work, too scary, too difficult. You feel good at something and connected to something, and it's really difficult to consider severing all of those connections and starting fresh somewhere else. I wanted a house. I wanted a car. I wanted a family. All of those things require that I make more than $20k a year, and Windermere could not offer me that. They also routinely insulted me, disrespected me and talked to me as if I was trash they were doing a favor for. To be clear, this is not MY department I am referring to, and I see Shawn and Chef as good friends, mentors, and examples of how to be human beings; I'm talking other management. Once I was done school, the idea of looking for a programming job was terrifying but I knew the money was better, and I knew the potential to move up was there, so I did it. It didn't even take long once I started; I answered an ad I saw on kijiji and had an interview a week or so later. My programming job is a good job. I get paid to do things that I love. To create, to program, to solve problems, to think of creative solutions. I still get to work as a team, but it's small and I can contribute. It's everything I wanted in a programming job, and I didn't even know what I wanted. I'm excited for the future, and where I may go. I still get nervous that it'll all get taken away at some point, that I'll lose my job and have to go crawling back to a cooking job... I think about that a lot, but I decide to just enjoy what I have while I have it, and I push those things out of my mind as best I can.The End
In the end, 2014 was one of the best years I can remember. Going forward, I know that things won't be quite as spectacular, but I can continue to try and improve my life, little bits at a time. This coming year I'm going to try to write more, take more pictures, and you know, all that other stuff I always say I'm going to do.2709 words
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Timeline
- I lived in Rodney
- I worked at Vicimus
- I'm married to Bekki
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