Dear Reader

I hate those Christmas show-off letters family members send around every year. They're always so full of shit and dripping with superiority and appeals for praise. Here's an idea. Save us all the saccharin headache and shove that lemon-burnt homemade paper somewhere the light of day will never touch it.

So I decided to write my own version. So without further ado, here's what happened to me this year (relax, if this doesn't make you feel better about your own life, nothing will).

Hey you,

Thanks for your letter updating me on the meaningless details of your life. Since you asked, here's what I've been up to this year.

2008 comes to an end in a little less than 24 hours and marks the end of a miserable transitioning year for me. At the start of January, I had recently finished working short term for a political party and was back at the public library shuffling magazines around in mind-numbing boredom.

In my over-eager ambition to do more (and earn more) with my life, I managed to obtain a permanent position at the aforementioned party in mid-February. It's been a relative successful change in that I had been going on twelve years at the library and desperately needed a change. However, I ended up leaving one extreme and jumping into another. While I don't regret leaving the library or taking a job earning significantly more than I was previously, I do regret that the job has reduced me to quivering rubble.

It's been stressful to say the least and while I have the confidence of my bosses, I realized rather quickly that I was in over my head. And so I started trying to make up for the lack of experience with a keen desire to try to do anything and everything that was asked of me. In an unstructured work environment, I basically was writing my own death certificate.

I've had the last few weeks off and looking back, there are definitely some good lessons to learn before I move on. I learned that I need to set boundaries for my workload and myself. Somehow, I had forgotten how to use the word 'no'. It's become pretty amazing to me that while I have no trouble telling strangers to F.O.A.D, I was unable to understand the scope of what I was agreeing to do on a daily basis. I was trying to keep up with the robots in my office who are perfectly content to spend 15 hours a day cranking out enough emails, reports and forms to choke a civil servant.

Hired consultants would later confirm to higher ups that I have been doing the work of 5 people. Unfortunately, this came after I realized that trailing behind me were the emaciated remnants of my social life and stress-induced bald spots. Seriously, this year, I lost chunks of hair.

That's what my ambition has wrought. Now I'm trying to take the positives from this situation and realizing that I absolutely have to put my foot down and not take on more than I can handle. That's a good lesson to learn. I'll take that.

The second lesson is that working in fundraising or politics is simply not for me. I care about politics and the issues in my community, but working behind-the-curtain is less about hope and change and more an exercise in frustration with mis-guided and mis-directed efforts. Oh, and douchebags. There are a ton of douchebags.

As I look forward to 2009, I hope to find meaningful work elsewhere. Work that would allow me to contribute to this blog more often. I hope to re-introduce myself to my friends and maybe bond with a few new people who think I'm neat.

And hi-fives, I need to get more of those.


As a treat for you, here's a little present from me to you.

Enjoy,

*P.S. if you send me another vomit-inducing about how awesome you are, you'll have to run and hide. Try Asia, I don't have the patience to find you amongst billions of people.

Douchebags of 2008

Sean Avery (NHL player, Vogue intern, GAP model)
- if that description wasn't enough to turn your stomach, this moron called a mini press conference before a game to talk shit about his former celebrity girlfriends who have moved on with other NHL players.
- currently suspended for 6 games and unlikely to return to the NHL

Stephen Harper (Prime Minister of Canada)
- won another minority government for Canada and after acknowledging the need for all parties work together, put together legislation to strip the parties of federal funding. Way to pave the way for cooperation in Ottawa!
- with behaviour like that, this guy is the type of person who comes over for dinner and then shits on your living room rug to say thank you.

Sarah Palin (gender-equality douchebag)
- is an explanation really necessary? I mean isn't setting the women's movement back several decades enough?
- if you need further evidence, this pretty much sums it up.

who else am I missing...?