End of Year Q and A

My friend and fellow writer Angela Misri just tackled this list on her blog and for some reason it resonated with me, so I thought I’d tackle it here. Here goes:

1. What makes this year unforgettable?
Definitely a trip to the United Kingdom with my family (England and Scotland). I saw Stonehenge during that trip, which I never thought I would ever see, and yeah I know it’s a bunch of rocks, but rocks don’t get much cooler than Stonehenge. The history! And did you know they have graffiti on them? Roman graffiti! We also spent a lot of time in London, the Isle of Skye, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Great family trip.

2. What did you enjoy doing this year?
Wait, didn’t we just cover this in question number one? I should probably learn to read ahead. Okay, aside from a trip to the UK, I enjoyed working on a couple of special projects. One is novel number two (working title Captain’s Away) and the other is a secret project I’m helping a friend with. It’s really cool, and I’m honoured to be helping him with it.

3. What/who is the one thing/person you’re grateful for?
My wife Lynda. Kind of a miracle that not only did she show up in my life but that she chose to stay there. If we expand the list to include three people, which I insist that we do, it would include my daughters Erin and Keira too. I must have paid extra in the Before Life for the Super Special Family Package, and I’m sure glad I did. Worth every cent.

4. What are your biggest wins this year?
Pleased to have successfully put together a little short story collection, which I’m calling Other Times and Places. There were a few wins in my day job, too, just a few projects that came together nicely. But the biggest win is probably the trip to the UK.

5. What did you read/watch/listen to that made the most impact this year?
There’s one movie I saw that I keep thinking about. It’s called The Life and Times of Colonel Blimp, a British film that came out in the early forties. I discovered it when Jim Donahue @otherjimdonahue mentioned it on his twitter feed. I knew Jim had interesting, eclectic taste, so I went looking for it. It did not disappoint. It’s about the lifetime of a soldier who’s lived through the Boer War as well as the First and Second World Wars. It’s really about growing older. You see an old person, you’re just looking at the tip of the iceberg. Behind what you see is an entire lifetime of experiences, not immediately visible. How did they become who they are? What did they go through to get there? That’s a part of what The Life and Times of Colonel Blimp is about. But it’s also about changing times. How what might have worked for you in, say, the Boer war might not necessarily serve you well in the Second World War, against the evil of the Nazis. Fascinating movie, and one of Martin Scorcese’s favourites, that directly influenced how he made Raging Bull.

6. What did you worry about most and how did it turn out?
I worried about a book fair some friends and I put on in May. Concerned it might turn out to be a complete disaster. There were disastrous elements, but we survived. We didn’t go broke, some people sold a few books, and we got some great interviews out of it. .

7. What was your biggest regret and why?
Long ago I vowed to live my life without regrets. With that mindset I make the best possible choices I can. In retrospect, they may not be the right choices, but looking back I know that they were the best possible choices I could have made with the information I had at available at the time.

8. What’s one thing that changed about yourself?
I care even less whether anyone likes me. Or so I tell myself.

9. What surprised you the most this year?
I discovered that I can’t do word problems involving math under severe time constraints surrounded by Vice Presidents, engineers, surgeons, and nuclear physicists working (more successfully) on the same problems. I really shouldn’t have been surprised by that, but I was. This happened at a course I took at Queen’s University Smith School of Business. A man’s got to know his limitations. I guess that’s one of mine.

10. If you could go back to last January 1, what suggestions would you give your past self?
Write more, better, faster. Completely useless advice, but it’s what I’d tell myself.