This year there were no big life events, at least none that could compare with getting married. But that is good because that means life was smooth, and can be enjoyed without having things nagging in the back of your mind or as many responsibilities to think about.

Although because there are few peaks and troughs, I get the worry that I am sleepwalking through life. I think what contributes to this is work and the processes around it. There is a lot of repetition from Monday to Friday, and then the work itself is not too interesting. Sure, there are challenges/difficulties, and I’m being placed in different scenarios; but nothing is insurmountable nor a genuine shift in paradigm. There is a general ennui although I don’t know if it its because of IBM or what I should expect after the honeymoon period of working.

But to be fair, I can’t say it was entirely boring. I did grow my career with more responsibilities this year; I was leading a team (although am not a people manager yet) and had some lackeys to do the work I didn’t feel enthusiastic about doing (yay for students!).

The weekends were usually filled with parties/social gatherings, or family activities. In the summer there was the added load of festivals, short trips or weddings. One change this year was that we didn’t go downtown that much; every time we go it feels like an event since we don’t have convenient access to the subway anymore. That cut down on the TSO, CD crawls, etc.

We continued to travel this year, as we are trying to make the most of our opportunities before nesting. We went to Asia for our long(er) summer holiday for the second year in a row, it was not originally planned that way but because ended up there because of family considerations. I’m starting to get a bit tired of travelling, mostly because there is such a concentrated need to travel and make the most of it within a short period (i.e., 3 weeks every year); plus the places we go to and see are not that conceptually different from Toronto.

We did experience a couple of neat things though, one was being in NYC during St Patrick’s Day where they had the largest St Patrick’s Day parade in the world (although not that interesting once you’re there). The other was going to North Korea, although it was on a guided tour and we weren’t allowed to deviate and explore.

In this year, I also:

• went on my first winery tour
• moved my blog from a custom solution to WordPress
• went to my first Toronto FC game
• cleared 10000 in gamerscore (currently at 14495 – 72.29% completion)
• wrote 238 blogs (about 2 every 3 days)
• got my preferred Facebook user name
• went to three weddings
• tried out Google Wave
• enjoyed playing Rock Band
• didn’t lose a lot of money in the stock market
• did my first (car) insurance claim
• saw the general proliferation of netbooks and eventually I got into the game
• gained a better appreciation of song/lyric writing
• didn’t really spend money on photo gear (I think I only bought a $50 lens – THAT’S IT!)
• experimented with data on mobile devices
• spent a lot of time thinking about Myers-Briggs Types Indicator
• climbed the CN tower for charity.
• merged Coop Rankings with InternSHARE
• Only went to the TSO once, the movie theatre 3 times and only bought 17 CDs!
• was pretty much over the DS but Warcraft made a late-year revival
• broke 58,000 on the odometer
• didn’t really succeed in getting rid of stuff

Posted by Kevin in Blogs, Facebook Notes Tags: games, recap, working, yearinreview