Ridiculous

This is among the most disgusting things I have ever read. These people need severe beatings. If this makes you as angry as it made me, get involved. Make phone calls, write letters, leave comments on sites like CBC that actually pay attention to what their readers are saying. It is high time we stopped rolling over and playing dead in the name of political correctness. If you stand for something, don’t be afraid to tell someone else what it is.

The Road Warrior

I often have to take a step back and shake my head at the twists and turns life throws at us. After some four years and change of agonizing over how on earth we were ever going to afford to buy a house, suddenly the new year dropped the possibility of doing so almost immediately right in our laps. The catch? (because there’s always a catch) It’s going to be in another city.

Just like that, out of nowhere, I’ve been promoted. While I’d love to tell you that it’s because I’m a highly intelligent and motivated individual and that this promotion is the result of my employer realizing that I’m simply too good not to promote, the reality is that I have worked many long and tedious hours to get to this point, and suddenly it is being recognized. The job itself came as a bit of a surprise. I saw the opening in early December and was offered an interview shortly after I applied, but due to the holiday season I didn’t actually get the said interview until last Wednesday. The shocker was that I was offered the position on Thursday- less than 24 hours later. The upsides are many: great opportunity, better money, huge visibility. It is not at all a stretch to say that this particular job is one that, if done well, could become a catapult for my career. The downside is the travel. The job is 90-100% travel. I get on a plane Sunday night and go to work in some remote location, then fly home on Friday to spend the weekend with my family. I am not exactly a stranger to travel; in fact in my previous job I used to do it regularly. The difference is that I was single then, and now I have four other people to worry about. Enter the move.

My wife and I discussed this at length before I agreed to accept the position, and I am grateful to havea spouse who is so encouraging and supportive. We decided that since I am going to gone most of the time, it doesn’t really make sense for us to continue living in Calgary. As much as we like it here, the spiralling cost of living in this city has effectively priced it out of our reach. The next best thing to being here is being in Lethbridge, so we have decided to relocate there. It really makes nothing but sense for us. The cost of living there is much lower, my wife will not have to work and will be able to stay home with the kids full-time, we have many friends there, and both my wife’s parents and my own parents live there. Paramount to the whole deal, we will actually be able to purchase our home.

I cannot honestly say that I am without reservations. The travel, although not as daunting to me as one might imagine, represents a challenge. I will miss my wife and kids a lot, and am not excited about spending so much time away from them. I cringe at the thought of the school concerts and birthday parties that I will not be present for, as well as the tiny evolutions in the lives of my children that I will more than likely miss. It will become extremely important to ensure that the time I do have available is spent in ways that will allow me to maintain and build relationships with my wife and children, because there will be precious little of it. I can already see how the travel will be very tiring. On the other hand, in some ways I am looking forward to it. Sitting in a hotel room alone every night won’t be terribly entertaining, but it will allow me to do things like finish the magazine articles I’ve been working on for the last three years, or maybe start playing my guitar again.

As far as the family goes, there will be ways to minimize my absence. Cellphones and the internet have made the world a much smaller place, and technology such as webcams and laptops will allow me to communicate nightly with my family. I am lucky enough that the company has agreed to fly me home every weekend to the city of my choice, so I will never have to go more than five days without seeing my family even though I may be working in the opposite corner of the continent for the rest of the week. With the hotel rewards points and air miles I’ll be racking up flying back and forth, I should have enough by the end of the year to take my family on a pretty decent holiday. Maybe my wife and I will finally be able to take that holiday to France we have been dreaming about for the past six years.

Honestly, I’m not really sure what to expect. Obviously there will be pros and cons to the situation, but from our perspective right now the positives seem to far outweight the negatives. Besides, we figure, we knew that at some point I would likely have to either relocate or travel extensively. Better to do it now while the children are relatively young than wait until they are older and have things like hockey games, music lessons, and scout camps in play. Hopefully by the time that happens, the travel phase will have played itself out and I will be able to transition to a position with a more stable schedule. Maybe it will be back here in Calgary; maybe someone out in the field, but wherever it is, it will be home and I will be able to enjoy it with my family. This could well prove to be one of those “short term pain for long term gain” opportunities. Whatever happens, it will be an adventure.

Happy frickin New Year

So here it is, the dawn of a brave new cycle. 365 untarnished days, 365 blank pages on which to scribe a story of decision, triumph, and disappointment. Another chapter in so many lives already reading too long, or a glorious beginning to those yet to open the cover of the volume that will document their existence here. 2007, here we come.

Really, I suppose this should have bee written ten days ago, but in keeping with the hectic nature of my life over the past few months, I’m just getting to it now. So much for that resolution about putting things off.

New Years used to be a bittersweet time of year for me. Sure, it was exciting heading off in to the great wide unknown, but there were always memories of people, places, and events that I was loath to resign to the often-musty rooms of the past. What was so great about a new year anyway? Why was I celebrating something that more than likely would play itself out with the same vigor and emotion as the one preceding it; whether the results be positive or negative? For all I knew at the time, I may well have been celebrating a death of a loved one or some other life event that I could not possibly have forecast at that particular juncture. Yes, New Years had always felt awkward to me. Not good, not bad, just unsure. Here was everyone around me celebrating and having a great time, and for some reason I never could decide exactly how I should be feeling about all of it.

About six years ago I just stopped worrying about it. Stopped caring, really. It was New Years Eve, 1999. I had friends up from Lethbridge and we were all set and determined to party like it was our last night on earth. For all we knew, it could have been; the threat of the Y2K bug loomed large and we half expected, half hoped that the stroke of midnight would bring with it something truly catastrophic. We went out. We ate, we laughed, we sang along with Silverchair’s “Anthem for the year 2000″ at the top of our lungs. Expectations for the evening were high. Then, unimaginably, nothing happened. The dance yeilded no new prospects, there was no New Years kiss, and midnight came and went unceremoniously; like a theif in the dark. While we had been waiting anxiously on the proverbial front lawn to celebrate its arrival, the new millenium had snuck in through the back door, made itself some mac & cheese, and settled in to watch a hockey game. It was as though we had come back inside, tired of waiting, only to discover that the guest of honour was already there. The car was much quieter on the way back to my condo, where we discovered with some disappointment that the computer still worked just fine, the phone was still in service, and the TV still dazzled us with its cable-fed glory. The digital clock on the microwave hadn’t even reset itself. The arrival of the year 2000 had been the most epic of letdowns.

We went to a party around 3 am, where we encountered much of the same. The girls were the same as they had been three hours earlier, the music the same; the mood the same. It could have been Halloween, or any other generic calendar holiday excuse to throw a party. It felt empty. I left that night feeling more tired than I had in along time.

By six a.m. we were all back at my condo falling uneasily into our first sleep of a new year, a new century, and a new millenium. I laid awake in my bed for about a half-hour, then rose, dressed, and retrieved my car keys from their resting place atop the microwave. There was something I had to see. I drove up on top of signal hill, just behind Canada Olympic Park, and parked the car facing east. Then, fighting off the persistent advances of fatigue, I waited.

1 January, 2000. 8:09 a.m.

Gradually it came. First the sky seemed to almost unknowingly lose its heaviness, the soft black-blue of the tired night fading to a deep ultramarine and finally to azure. The clouds, if they could be identified as such, hung immobile in ragged sheets; as if they had been there all along and were oblivious to the changing of the hours. The sky appeared to be torn in several places, bleeding colour as though it were a poorly-done watercolour painting. A sliver moon watched idly from above, not seeming to care that its careful watch had almost ended.
Finally, deep scarlet fingers reached skyward, changing the blues to reds, oranges, and pinks. The tired bulk of the sun eased its way slowly from the horizon, and the new millenium had begun at last.

Just as it had every morning for the twenty-five years I had previously spent on this earth, the sun came up just the same. After all the hype, all the worry, all the anticipation, and all the celebration, the morning came just the same. As I returned home and finally yeilded to the comforting numbness of a much-needed sleep, I came to the realization that regardless of its position on the calendar, New Years is just another day.

That was the last time I celebrated New Years with any real effort. The next year I would be in a car in northern Ontario, on my way to Montreal with my fiancée of two months. The year after that I would be married and watching movies with my new wife. 2003 was probably the most effort we put out; we drove to Banff with our six week-old first child and treated ourselves to the New Years Eve buffet at the Banff Springs hotel. We rang in the new year with a kiss on the frozen, moonlit shores of lake Minnewanka, and it was everything a new year should be. Beyond that, I can’t even remember what I did on New Years for the past couple of years. This year I worked until 7 pm, then came home and played cards with my wife and my brother & sister.

I think it is folly to choose one day to celebrate an entire year. We should celebrate each day of each year as if it is our last, and live our lives in keeping with the same idea. I hope every day of 2007 is cause for celebration for each one of you; whoever you are. I wish you strength through your challenges, joy through your victories, and hope through your dark times.

And the sun rises.