Big Things

I've been living in Chilliwack the past couple weeks in preparation for UFV's Christmas Production, and my boss at Academy Plus Painting has been giving me living and office space at his place while I make a website for him.  Odd thing is, I never figured I'd be doing this kind of stuff as a job after grade 11's work experience program.  Squarespace makes web design easy, I guess.

I'm creating an entirely new website where I can showcase my artwork and other creative projects, and maybe even start selling prints and commissions online.  The quality of my artistic work has gotten to  a level where I can produce quality work and get paid for it, so I might as well give it a try and see what happens. I may even migrate my blog over to it.

Promethian

Reach

La Mancha Man

The Pit

On the Backs of Giants

In want of playtesters.

I just demoed the video game that I am currently calling "moment-um" for my new media class.  They were pretty impressed with what I accomplished in the time I was given. It's still a work in progress, and there are some some big bugs I need to clear out of it, but from what I showed, this is promising be worth putting on display or even putting a price tag on once I've tightened it up.  

So knowing that my current readership knows more about programming than I do, I'm putting out a request for playtesters to help me out by providing feedback and advice.  If anyone is interested please send me a reply either by Gmail, Google plus, or even here on the blog.  

Reforging lost dreams

Still going through a stressful period of my life.  My dog died just recently from cancer, and home life has been a little stressful for various reasons

On the upside, my theatre classes have turned out to be very good as a form of social and physical therapy, as I am still building back leg strength from the ankle break from June.  The Theatre crowd is a pretty fun bunch, and I've managed to avoid alienating them so far with my antics.  While it is an upper level course,  I've been able to keep pace with everyone else, thanks to the experience gained through my background in English and visual arts, as well as role playing.  While I ended up getting a backstage role in the Christmas production, I'm not too bothered by not getting an acting role.  A lot of theatre students end up working behind the scenes, and It'll still be cool that my cousin and I will be working with the same Director, even though we live in different provinces. 

More interesting than that, is what I've been doing in my self directed new media course.  With it being a self directed program this semester, I've been excitedly delving into learning to create video games using preexisting programming suites.  It's been really exiting, as I've managed to make more progress from two weeks of self - directed study than I had through both grades 11 and 12 in high school.  I'm not saying that what I'm doing is amazing by any stretch of the imagination, but It could be feasibly be possible to be an independent video game designer on my own, even if only as a side hobby or as a component of something bigger.  To me at least, this will put game design as yet another medium in my tool belt as a modern day renaissance man.

This semester again wasn't what I had initially planned for.  It was brought on by financial hardships because of my physical injury from a few months prior.  Still, it's been showing me that my life so far hasn't been the train wreck I sometimes see it as.  I am a unique and talented person, and while I haven't yet found myself in my ideal career, I have done some amazing things, and have picked up a lot of of knowledge and skills from a lot of different areas,  that do begin to come together in some interesting ways.  I'm not sure what next semester will hold, whether I will be back to the painting trade, or spending another semester in school,  but this semester has shown me that my interests, talents, and experiences are building towards a bright and amazing future.  I don't know when it will be, exactly, and what form it will ultimately take, but I know it's there, and I'll be able to reach it eventually.

Early 2013, Grim Portents

Special thanks to Brent Hunter for digging this post up for me after had lost it. 

Following my awesome summer job as a painter,  my employer challenged me by nominating me to replace him as owner and operator of the local franchise of the painting company I was operating.  While I had some reservations about accepting this challenge, my self confidence was at an all time high, and I felt I could handle anything if I put my mind to it.  Before I started, I knew that this would be the hardest thing I ever did so far in my life, but if I succeeded, the rewards would be great.  That was at the end of 2012.

2013 began quite the opposite from the previous year.  The few days prior to returning to UFV following the winter break, I had tried to contact one of the professors at UFV regarding my continued tutoring for one of his children.  I then found out through a sign in front of his office that he had died over the course of the holidays.  While I didn't know him that well, the experience of finding out about his death affected me in an unusual way.  I wasn't so much caught up in grief so much as disoriented by a rather blunt reminder of the unpredictable nature of human life.  As the beginning of the marketing season began, I was now facing the grim reality that sometimes things happen that you would never expect or plan for.  If people can die so unexpectedly and without warning, my business could potentially die with just as little warning.  The world began feeling a lot more chaotic and unpredictable.  Facing this existential crisis, I spent a number of my evenings in my basement, performing a sort of interpretative dance as a means of spiritual expression.  This experience turned out to be the inspiration for my two major painting projects for that semester. 

A short while after that, my Grandma took a flight in from Calgary to visit us. While we regularly went to visit her in Calgary, it was her first time coming out to Abbotsford since Grandpa died several years earlier.  She was so proud of me taking on the responsibility of running my own company, and she had a number of pictures taken of me in front of my company sign.  Then, a single week after her return to Calgary, she died in her sleep.  Unlike the previous death, it didn't seem as sudden to me.  In the past couple years, she hadn't been in particularly good health, and I even remember thinking when I hugged her goodbye that it was quite possibly the last time I would ever do so.  As a Christian, I know that dying was a good thing for her, as she could finally be with her husband again.  When I looked back on it immediately after what happened that summer I felt ashamed that things didn't turn out as well for me as she thought. 

On top of coping with these deaths, I was kept so busy with school, and lining up painting contracts for the summer, that I had to give up both the tutoring, and game development project.  The larger of the two paintings from that semester, was accidentally left abandoned on campus after I had finished it.  In the summer, I just didn't seem to have the time to retrieve it.  In the fall, though, I came to see it as having been a prophecy for the greater turmoil that I had just so recently been through.  It wasn't until the spring of 2014 that I brought myself to go and retrieve it.  It is now on the wall outside my bedroom.  I'm hoping that eventually it will remind me less of what I lost over the course of that year, and more of what I gained from the experience.

In terms of marketing, after a slow start, I was gradually getting the hang of booking jobs.  When the time finally came to begin production, I had already booked a third of the amount that I was aiming towards for the entire year.  Before we even got started on the first house, I had already made some very big mistakes that would come into effect later on.

Better omens.

Due to still needing time off work to keep recovering, and the need to be doing something productive within that time, I am going back to school full time.  With the recent discovery of still having a bunch of upper level electives available towards my BA, I made the decision. To spend them in the theatre.  While there were concerns both over my lack of previous theatrical experience, I quickly gave them more to be concerned about when I showed up to class with my leg in a cast.  Fortunately, my first day worked out pretty well, as neither handicap seemed to get in the way.

Now, I have a cousin, who I typically only see once every ten years.  Strangely though, despite the number of years that pass without contact, when we do meet, we surprisingly find ourselves still having a lot in common.  While this could be attributed to genetics, which a lot of it probably is, the two of us recently uncovered a coincidence that is particularly uncanny.  While this is my first year going into theatre,  my cousin has been pursuing acting right out of high school.  So, when I find out that the director for this semester's holiday production does a lot of work in my cousin's hometown, I am curious if there is any connection.  As it turns out, while the director hasn't previously met my cousin, he is going to be juggling productions between Chilliwack and Fort McMurray, and to top that off, he will be directing a production that my cousin will be auditioning for this weekend.  So yeah,  bizarre coincidences just seem to come naturally to us.  I'm taking it as a small sign that this is the right thing for me to be doing in my life.

Regardless of whether I get a role or not in the production,  I'm pretty optimistic that this fall is going to be a good one, as long as I don't let the difficulties in my life stop me from chasing my dreams. 

2014: Finding things I didn't know I lost.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.   I know that Nietzsche is a bit tired and clichéd,  so I'll expand upon this in my own words.  The act of physical exertion actively results in the wears down and weakens our muscles, however, as a reaction to this, new muscle tissue is formed to reinforce the limbs, making them stronger and more resilient than they were before, allowing for it to handle even more strenuous tasks.  In the same way, going through difficult times life makes you better able to cope with bigger storms down the road.  I would not be able to share this story two years ago.  While I'm still in some ways recovering from that year, and at the same time that I'm trying to recover, I am having to confront new problems.  Even as I am rebuilding myself, it feels as if I'm finding new parts of my mind that are broken and require fixing.

2014 began with what felt like a miracle of grace.  The morning of the big meeting between my parents and a representative of the painting company that would decide my fate for this year, I visited my family doctor at the request of my parents.  Telling him about my present situation, he asked me about my feelings.  I believed myself fine at the time, but answered his questions honestly.  After his series of questions, he informed me that I was suffering from a more severe depression than I had believed.  He agreed with my parents that a second year attempting to run a business would be extremely bad for me psychologically,  and wrote a note to confirm it.  With the meeting a few hours before the meeting, I spent roughly two of them in heavy prayer, begging God to let this conflict end in this meeting.  I was terrified that the meeting would result in an extensive legal dispute that would carry on for months,  didn't think I could handle the idea of bringing that upon my family.  I just wanted things to end there.  I needed peace.  I needed freedom.  Returning to my metaphorical pit, I couldn't climb while I was still chained to the floor.

When the meeting finally came, everything was fairly pleasant.  The representative of the company was very polite throughout the meeting.  I still think he believed that he could make my next year turn out better.  He had reevaluated some of the events of my last year, finding some areas where the company hadn't helped me as much as they should have and had made some efforts to make amends for those mistakes.  When he saw the note from the doctor, however, he finally realized that I was in no state to carry on another year with them.  He quickly apologized to all of us, promising that my 2014 contract would be terminated immediately, with no further expense to me, and that I would be reimbursed for the insurance charges.  I was shocked with what to my mind seemed to be the least likely turn of events.  My prayers had been answered, and I had been set free.  I finally felt like I could find my way back out of the pit. 

My family also decided that I should really spend a semester back at UFV, and helped me pay for a couple courses to help me build myself back up.  I remember for the next couple weeks after being released from my contract, I was constantly expressing the the joyful sensation of relief. 

Following the semester, I decided to get back to working as a painter for another company.  I ended up getting a position as a crew chief from the person who replaced me in running the student painting company.   He had no prior painting experience, but as a business student, I figured that with my help he would be able to succeed where I had failed.  As it was though, I came to the realization pretty quickly that in my current place in life, I needed to be working with a company that I could learn from, and as much as I wanted to help him, I was found that I was watching my previous year all over again, just from an external perspective, and I wasn't prepared to deal with that.  I gave my boss two weeks notice, and promised to give him as much assistance and advice as I could in that time.  Still, as the two weeks went on, I became increasingly frustrated with how many things that the parent company hadn't told him about, and he would have never thought to ask.  Finally the last straw came with a job two days before the end of my two weeks where we absolutely needed fall protection, and my employer's manager insisted that it wasn't necessary when I, the other painter, and even the client insisted that it was.  Rather than break my neck because of the district manager's lack of appropriate concern, I told my manager that I had enough of his manager's [CENSORED] and that I wasn't going to work another day if I was going to be put into a situation guaranteed to land me in the hospital.  I followed up with an email reiterating that it was nothing about him personally, but more of a general lack of confidence in the person working above him.  He was surprisingly understanding of my position, despite being distraught over seeing me go, as it left him in severe demand of painters. 

Following that, I began working for a different company run by painters who started off running a painting franchisesinilar to the one I owned, before deciding to start an independent business of their own.  Working with them, I found myself learning a lot of better techniques, and after the first couple weeks, I had built a solid reputation with my employers for my professional workplace attitude, and willingness to take on new challenges and handle complications without a negative attitude. 

Still, after only a month of working with them, I had an accident while working, and ended up breaking my left ankle.  At first I believed it wasn't a serious injury,  insisting that I had merely gotten the wind knocked out of me, and should be able to get back up after a short rest.  The other painter, as well as my employer felt otherwise, and insisted that I go to a hospital.  Since the pain and swelling was increasing,  I eventually agreed, still feeling good enough to use my less injured right leg to drive myself to the hospital.  Turns out it was worse than I had thought,  and I have now spent ten weeks recovering.  On the bright side, with it being a work related injury, I have been given financial compensation for the lost wages so where last year, I was working hard and losing money, this year I am doing nothing and still making money.  It has been irritating to me, however,  as I would be making more if I was in the work force, but am at present still unable to return. To make matters worse, now that I am past a 10 week mark,  my wage loss is being readjusted based on my income over the past year, effectively cutting my weekly income in half.  (Thank you again 2013...) 

I like video games.  You can learn a lot from them.  They allow you to explore and learn how to overcome situations that you haven't yet in real life.  In a way, they can teach you the value of perseverance and creativity in overcoming difficult situations.  One of the things other things I like is that they typically give you freedom to save, load, or even start over fresh when you find yourself failing.  This is a feature, that is unfortunately missing in real life.  When you experience heavy losses, you can't just go back a year to your last auto-save.  Your problems aren't going to go away.  They are just going to get worse until you deal with them.  Recently I've been having trouble dealing with that.   When you find yourself in a situation like mine, it becomes easy to hide in the forgiving world of video games, where you can freely fix your past mistakes before you make them, or at the very least, start over with a clean slate as many times as you like.

When the world seems to be constantly beating you down, it's easy to retreat into video games.  I'm not saying at all that video games are evil, but I'm realizing that even in my current condition, rather than retreating from the world until my injuries have healed, I need to set real world ambitions for myself. 

I've been recently having difficulties in finding ambition.  I'm having to overcome my fear of pursuing goals in my life.  It's difficult, considering that it's easy to feel like most of my pursuits have ended in failure.  I'm afraid that I've become destined to be one of those starving artists, who are too overwhelmed by the struggle to cope with their psychological issues to be able to actually survive.  My future seems uncertain at the moment, but I am realizing that waiting for life to get better isn't enough. I need to take action now in order to get through this.

So, I've been having to reevaluate my options, and strangely enough,  It seems that right now, the place for me to be right now is back into full time schooling at UFV.  I've fortunately been able to get into enough courses that will all work towards my eventual graduation, and provide me with the right environment, support, and education to pursue goals and ambitions that I had thought to be too distant to even think of.  There is still some uncertainty, and I know it won't be a walk in the park, but I have faith that this is what I should be doing this Fall.

Thank you to anyone who cared enough to bear with me on this journey of mine, either through reading this blog or in real life.  Just being able to tell this story up to present day feels like I've managed to recover some of the ambition that I lost sometime in the past two years.   I am hoping that I will continue with this blog, as it feels like it represents the enthusiasm that I had back in 2012 for everything that was going on at the time.  If you found this story too dull and depressing to read, I hope you will find what will is to come more fascinating.

Looking foreward to Fall 2014!

Summer 2013: The summer that broke the boy

I'm not putting all the blame on the company for what happened, even though some people think I should.  I still believe that it is possible to succeed using that system that they have set up.  The big problem is that they are giving the financial responsibility of runnong a business to s lot of very young people, some of which (like me) have had no business training prior to signing up.

So let's get down to some of the specifics of how things went wrong.  First off was the relationship I had with my employees.  My initial round of hiring was pretty much giving jobs to the first people who asked.  As a person who hangs out mainly with computer and art students.  I didn't see a problem with that immediately.  I mean, I was an art and formerly computer student, and I did great last year.  If painting houses is do simple that even I could do it, then pretty much anyone should be able to do it.  Right?  Wrong.  I want to state for the record that these people were not lazy.  What I didn't know at the time was that there are some things that, oddly enough, I was more suited to doing, compared to many people I know.  Through my summer jobs from 2010 to 2012 had built up enough resilience and mental fortitude to handle summer temperatures and working on ladders, whereas most of my friends, as eager as they were to learn, were not able to keep up with the physical demands of the job. 

I approached the my relationship with my employees as being too much of a teacher or buddy than an actual boss.  I couldn't bring myself to give warnings or fire people for when it seemed like things weren't going too well for them.  Instead I  tried to pick up the slack by putting in extra hours on the site without tracking them to boost their numbers.  I tried to encourage them, telling them (and myself) that they would get better in time.  Since they were better able to see than I did that things weren't working out, it was up to them to call things off, which they did. I don't blame them for this, though at the time I felt like I was being abandoned in my time of need.  While part of it was that they needed to look out for their own interests, they also couldn't stand watching me destroy myself in trying to make it work.

Another big issue was in a marketing tactic that ultimately came back to bite me.  It was suggested to me that a good way of closing an estimate is by offering a %10 discount, while marking up the overall price to compensate.  While I liked the idea of giving discounts for booking early, I foolishly decided against marking up, as I felt that such a tactic would be too dishonest for my tastes.  Unfortunately, what I didn't realize about this was that if you are only getting what's left once all the painters, supplies, and royalties are left over, a %10 discount off the overall job meant a %50 or more decrease on what I was taking home from each job, and that didn't even include fuel or non-paint expenses.  I ended up selling off my entire profit margin just to make a sale, without considering my own bottom line.

In addition to those problems there were a number of jobs that I ended up running into unforseen problems that I did not ha e the experience to solve, and resulted in me either having to pay to repair damages or lose jobs contracts entirely.  Thankfully those lost contracts were only priced for roughly $550 each, but things get messy when you need to pay your painters, from your own pocket, and you haven't made a cent off the entire month.  If any of my previous employees are reading this,  I thank you again for the grace you have given me.

I worked hard to adapt to my situation, frequently working 12 hour days, and on the weekend to meet deadlines. There were even times when things looked like they were starting to come together, and I was finally starting to get some money coming back to me.  It was in one of these little eyes in the hurricane that I agreed to sign on for a second year.  After all, with so many mistakes made this year, I would have far less to make the next year.  

Then it came crashing down again with a job where fixing one problem led to creating an even bigger one.  What should have been a two day job stretched into two weeks.  I couldn't bring my painters back to help fix their mistakes because there was no room left in the budget, and so I had to spend long and odd hours of the day trying to fix everything on my own.

Finally, I had enough of that job.  All my efforts to fix the situation had failed, and I had to accept defeat in the face of a job that had become beyond my ability to repair.  It was then decided to strip and replace the aluminum siding altogether and to hire a contractor to do the job, but I was saddled with having to pay multiple insurance deductibles amounting to almost double the original value of the job.  I am not proud of that job.  I put everything I could into fixing it, but there came a point where I just didn't know how to fix the problems anymore, and my parent company was too remote to give me the help I needed right from the start of the job.  I remember coming home from work at 8:30 in the evening on a Saturday, and my mom was so proud of me for all the effort I was putting into my job, but even then I knew that even if I did somehow manage to get paid for the job, I wouldn't be getting nearly as much back as I had already put into it.

Again, earlier in the year, thinking that I would be making more money, I made the decision to go to PAX for a second year.  With the tickets already paid for, and the rooms already booked, it felt like it was too late to bail out by the time I knew I couldn't afford it.  But, after the gut wrenching tragedy of my past summer so immediately behind me, I really felt like i needed something good to have happened that year just to keep me from committing suicide.  So, I skipped refilling my prescription anyways, promising myself to spend as little money as possible.  Without my medication, most of the weekend was a haze, and not in a good way.  Most of what I remember was feeling miserable out of guilt I was spending money that I didn't feel was my own and complaining about the prices and lines for everything.  I really hope I didn't bring down anyone else's fun, but given that I was simultaneously withdrawing into ADD and severe Depression, I did not enjoy my time there nearly as much as th previous year.  I had some fun there, don't get me wrong, but  overall,  it felt less of a "much deserved vacation,  and more of a frivolous misuse of money.

At last , at around the middle of September, I had run out of jobs and finished a final warranty job from the last year, getting me a $600 check that promptly was consumed by Bill payments.  I had planned to try to keep going another month or two working on my own, but I had to face the fact that even if I could find a few more jobs to keep me busy for another month, I couldn't even pay for gas.  So I called my district manager, told him I couldn't keep going this year, and decided to try to save up enough money for the next year doing something else.  All I could really find at the time was a weekend job driving a dog waste removal truck, and a small handful of either independent or sub contracting jobs.  At best, that amounted to the equivalent of a small part time job in terms of income, but I am grateful to my clients for the work they gave me, and I am proud to say that they were really pleased by the quality of the work that I did for them in return. 

While it was slow going, I felt like I was slowly recovering from my losses of the past several months.  In the middle of it all, there was a looming sense of dread with the knowledge that I had still signed on for a second year, and I was still trying to pay back the losses from the first tear, much less afford all the marketing and setup that would be needed before going into a second year, even with the bonus they give returning veterans.  In this time, my family and friends could tell that the events of last summer had scarred me psychologically.  Internally, I kept telling myself that next year would be different, and that with everything I learned from this year, I should have no problem next year.  Even with that potentially being true, there was still the far too threatening possibility that I may fail again.  If the first year left me in a pit, failing a second year would have sealed my coffin and buried me in it.  I needed out, but backing out of a contract would be a difficult process of its own.  There were heavy fines set up to discourage quitting prematurely, and company was very strong in their encouragement to keep me going, offering me more stable plans for the next year, which almost had me thinking that it might be worth it to tough it out for one more year.  But even with a simpler plan, I would still have to rely on support from my parents to even get started,  and they were not going to be sponsoring a threat to their son's financial and psychological wellbeing.   They had me schedule a meeting between them and a representative of the company, so that they could make it clear that they wanted me out of the contract. 

I know that the idea of a 25 year old man, relying on his parents to fight his battles for him is pretty pathetic.  At that point in time, though,  I was I could no longer fight for myself.  My confidence and Willpower was shattered,  and judging myself by my financial wellbeing, I felt like I was less than nothing.  The sum of my life felt like a net loss on the world.  Even without paying for rent and food, though, the bills and interest that I had to pay on a monthly basis consumed almost all the money I made that wasn't spent on gas.  From my perspective,  climbing out of this financial pit would be a slow, and distance I was needing to climb seemed like it was always getting bigger.  I gave up on having any sense of ambition, as I felt like ambition was an invitation to failure.  You can't fly when you are using all your strength to climb. 

That's where I was at the end of 2013.  2014 hasn't been as dark as as this year was so far,  I'm still dealing with fallout from last year, and probably will be for at least a few more years to come.  Even then, there are still psychological scars that I will likely be carrying for the rest of my mortal existence.   I am a sadder person than the man I was before, but hopefully the wisdom gained will make up for it in the long run. 

Dear Internet x2

Guess where I'm going at the end of the month?

...Yes, it may be a photography class.

2012. There was a ship...

This is the first in what will hopefully be a series of posts in which I relate the events of the past two years.  I know a lot of the people who will be reading this right away, probably already know the story, at least in part, but given my current life situation, I feel like I need to put this out there, if only to get these thoughts out of my mind and into text.  Hopefully somebody out on the internet will have the patience to gain something useful out of this, but in the meantime, I'm going to need to unburden myself of this story, if I'm going to climb out of this pit I've fallen into.

So let's get started before everything went wrong.  Maybe play that one track from the Fellowship of the Ring where we're still comfortable, happy, and optimistic in the rolling hills of the Shire.  As far as specific years of my life so far go, I'd say that 2012 was my favorite.  I had finally figured out how to get my GPA to start going up, my student loans felt manageable, and my credit rating was healthy.  At the time the most troubling thing on my mind was that I was 24 years old, and had only gone on two dates in my entire life.  At first I was going to describe all the pleasant things of 2012  in a single run-on sentence, but then decided on switching to a list, and then finally dedicating each of the nice things roughly a paragraph each.  While I am sure there are other blessings that I could recall from 2012, these are the ones foremost on my mind at present.

This technically happened right at the close of 2011, but it carried into the next year.  One of my best friends, James and the  asked me to be one of his groomsmen.  Obviously this is not as big a life event as a marriage proposal, or even being asked to be a best man, but for me, the thought that I was that good of a friend that he would pick me as one of the select few to join ranks with him on the biggest day of his life, was a huge honor for me, as I had been used to assuming that I would be close to the last person picked for almost anything.  Thinking back on that New Years Eve of 2011, I had a pretty good idea that 2012 was going to be a good year.  (Quick shout out to the James and Jacelyn's blog, foxtailsandphoenixdown.blogspot.ca.  Currently the most recent post is a year old root beer review, but I'm expecting an update pretty soon here, with some stories and pictures from their vacation.)

Next thing was that I got to enjoy a second semester of Video Production with one of the best teams ever.  Working with them was awesome, as we somehow miraculously avoided any real conflicts or schisms on our team.  It was these people that really helped me uncover a hidden talent and passion for acting.  While we haven't really communicated much since then, I want to thank them again for being the so brilliantly talented people, who were able to work together so well, and also to Tom, our Instructor for all the praise and encouragement on my acting ability.

In summer, I ended up getting a student painting job, and ended up doing such a good job at it that my employer ended up offering me his position for the next year, which unfortunately I decided to take.  Still, I really enjoyed that summer, as I had felt that I had finally found something that I could not only do well, but could also enjoy and make money doing.

It should also be noted that I was also tutoring part time during the winter spring and fall, as well as helping out with childcare in a divorce care program at my church.  Thinking back on that, I still have mixed feelings about that. One thing that I really enjoyed was the idea that I was making a significant contribution to the lives of these kids, by giving them the assistance and encouragement they needed at a key point in their lives. This is likely because I felt that, having had to deal with ADD as a kid, I was able to give the kids something that I wish I had when I was their age.  I now regret that I didn't continue on with tutoring the following year, but at the time I felt that I was too busy to be able to handle it.

Another thing that was a little meta was that I started this blog, and was pleasantly surprised that after only a couple reviews I had made some (albiet very minor) contacts in the board game industry.  Unfortunately, that too fell to the wayside in the horror that was 2013.  Perhaps if I had kept on writing and reviewing here regularly, I could have actually built up a decent sized following, though I suppose it is never too late to start it all up again.

On the Labor Day long weekend I went to down to PAX (Penny Arcade Expo) Prime for the first time with a bunch of my friends, and was blown away by the experience.  I'm sure that any friends who read this blog are already familiar with the experience, but at the time, it was so amazing meeting people who design the things I love to play and read, play games months or even years in advance of release, and generally be surrounded by such a huge crowd of people that I could talk to about my interests and hobbies as if they were some of my closest friends.  While I went again in 2013, I wasn't able to enjoy it as much as I really wasn't able to afford it that year.  I made the wise, yet disappointing decision to not attend this year's PAX (coming this upcoming long weekend), but hopefully I can afford to attend next year.  In the meantime, If one of you guys read this before the weekend, please bring me back some swag.

Another awesome thing of 2012, which I am sad didn't really pan out in 2013, is that bunch of my friends from UFV (many of which I attended PAX with) decided to band together to create their own independent video game, and I was brought on as one of the artists.  Again, this would have been another dream come true for me, but unfortunately due to a variety of factors, (largely difficulty in scheduling enough time to meet up and work on it) the project didn't end up getting very far.

Vaguely related to this is that Ryan, one of the guys who I was working with on this did a Let's-Play of X-COM at around the same time that we were working on this, using a bunch of the people in and around CISSA as soldiers in his play-through.  Turns out, I ended up winning the psychic lottery, and got to be the guy who does the heroic self-sacrifice to save the world in the closing cinematic.  It was a nice little vicarious thrill for me, even though I had no influence over the events IRL, but it's pretty cool being the Gary Stu of story that I didn't write.  (You can find it at http://procedurallygenerated.com/?cat=21.  While he isn't updating Lets-com anymore he still updates regularly.  He does a lot of indie game rieviews on there, so take a gander if you are a gamer.)

So yeah.  There's what I can remember of a 2012 in a nutshell.  Pretty nice eh?  But in the middle of it all, there is one decision that is the biggest regret of my life, it would be signing up for the disaster that was 2013.
This upcoming series of posts is not really a cry for attention or pity, as much as my depression riddled soul craves such things, but more of an unloading of a heavy burden that has been weighing down my mind and soul for the past year.  So in a manner similar to Colridge's Ancient Mariner, allow me to share this tale with any of you who care to read these great monoliths of text.  Hopefully some wisdom can be found in the learning, and freedom can be gained in the telling.

Alright, let's shoot this Albatross!