It’s Boxing Day and there’s 5 days left in 2010.  As I sit here and reflect on the past year, I’m struck by the “toughness” that characterized the first three-quarters of 2010.

I came to the conclusion that I had to sell my little house (aka Maisonette) in Chelsea, Quebec. A place that I loved, but was just too much for me.

Then I went through a hellish process selling it. Imagine every fuck up possible and you’ll have the broad strokes of the sale of my Maisonette. I won’t bore you with the details, but I will say that a questionable home inspector, a shoddy local water filtration company and a mortgage penalty that made my heart race, all had me up at nights.

There was the new job; one that I had hoped would be “different”. It didn’t take me long to realize that the difference I was looking for could only be experienced outside the umbrella of the public service.

There were the bad dates…oh God, there were bad dates. When I think of the characters: the RCMP officer who, on our first and only date, told me he liked my plain looks, the fireman who couldn’t look at me during dinner, the uptight businessman whose favourite adjective was “nummy (as in, “you look nummy” tonight) and the real estate agent who, after four dates, wanted to keep his options open and not commit to dating only one person at a time.

There was the loneliness and the feeling of being lost which finally overwhelmed in the summer and resulted in me having to take six weeks off of work on stress leave.

Forced smile, a self-portrait, summer 2010. Looking back, taking my picture through a decayed looking-glass was fitting.

Albert Einstein said it best, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” By the fall of 2010, I finally realized that, for as long as I could remember, I was subscribing to a paradigm that shared Einstein’s definition of insanity.

Things had to change and, as the year began its sunset, I finally initiated the momentum of change. I negotiated my year sabbatical at work, I packed up the material things that “represented” my life, by divine providence I found an amazing boxing coach, made the decision to move St. Catharines to live with my sister Gail and her family and, inspired by Alan, revisited the dream of working towards an amateur boxing bout.

Here are some more numbers: 7 days left at work and 15 days left in Ottawa. Now I’m ready, the countdown is on!