The Year Meme

[pyat]

Respond to this, ask for a year to write about, and write a post about what you were doing in that year. sassy_fae gave me 2000!


On January 1st, 2000, I was 25 years old. I’d been married to velvetpage for six months, most of them quite happy. We spent New Year’s Eve quietly at home, just in case the direst Y2K predictions came true. We watched CNN, and I drank the barest sip of champagne at midnight. The man next door tried to kiss my hand.

We were living in a fairly nice two-bedroom apartment at the base of the Hamilton Escarpment, along with a handful of Zebra Finches and a Pentium-133. The view from our balcony was often very impressive. On pleasant days you could watch men in hang-gliders hurling themselves out into the void over the Red Hill Valley. The major downside was the proximity of a railway track. The scream of train brakes, and the occasional nearby locomotive whistle, could be unnerving at 2 AM.

The building was affordable, and directly across from the Hamilton campus of velvetpage’s teachers college. We were relatively poor, but almost always managed to make ends meet, though velvetpage’s student loan was an ominous shadow constantly hanging overhead.

I was starting my second year as Senior Staff Writer at a national computer magazine. I was alternately frustrated and bored by the job, and I wasn’t the only one. The editorial staff spent perhaps 20 hours a week playing Quake death-matches. Every second Thursday I stayed around after hours to run a 2nd edition AD&D game for the managing editor and the head of IT. Corporate journalism confused and bored me. When I was hired, I thought Microsoft and IBM were the same company. And, I still had sort of a willful resistance to self-improvement and a sort of distaste for success which, combined, prevented me from doing more than a bare minimum of work.

In retrospect I see that I’d also over-committed myself. I was commuting 180 kms each day on the busiest (and slowest) highway in the country, and I didn’t even have doc_mystery’s radio plays to occupy my mind. Two or three evenings a week I was driving the Salvation Army soup van, an enormous mobile kitchen that prowled the streets of Hamilton until midnight. I’d get home between 1 and 2 AM.

On top of that, I was writing regular columns for Realms magazine, and writing my first RPG book, Doloreaux. It’s little wonder that velvetpage saw very little of me, and often found me stressed-out and snappish when I was home.

In February, I had a serious car crash. I rear-ended an off-duty RCMP officer while merging from the DVP onto the 401. I can remember thinking to myself “I’m way too tired to drive. I should go back to the office and sleep on the couch.” Ten seconds later – smash! - and I was trying to find my glasses, which had been knocked to the floor by the impact. My car, a 1985 Cutlass Cierra, was a write-off. I got finally home around 10 PM, riding in an auto club tow truck. I decided to quit the magazine that night.

With the tiny cash payout I got for the 85 Olds ($1500), I actually managed to buy a car from a car lot. The 1989 Cutlass Calais cost me just $1350. It broke down fairly regularly, but rarely in ways that prevented me from driving it. I quickly grew accustomed to its quirks and it served us well on road-trips and commutes for three years.

About this time my velvetpage’s parents started to break-up. Their separation was extremely stressful for everyone involved, though looking back eight years it is clear that it was necessary. We took velvetpage’s father to an ER at one point, and often witnessed his breakdowns and depressions. The car crash, my decision to change jobs, the stress of the breakup, and our finances caused a great of heartache and worry for us for the first few months of 2000.

In March I resigned the magazine, and took a job as a newspaper reporter in Haldimand County. The sheer relief of not commuting, of not having to drive 90 kms to sit and decode marketing-speak all day, was remarkable. Things began to improve for us. Even though the newspaper paid much less than the magazine, the work suited me much more, and was much more pleasant. velvetpage started substitute teaching later in the year, which took a lot of financial pressure off.

I can’t express what a change this job switch made in my outlook. I was driving just as much as before, except in the most pleasant of circumstances. I’d cruise down country roads, exploring hills and streams at random, digging into local history and discovering entire lakes and valleys and towns I’d had no idea even existed.

I soon crossed paths with the unspeakable Mayor Marie Trainer, who continues to afflict the people of Haldimand County, even though her own council has voted to reprimand her and bar from serving as a public spokesperson. In November of that year I was at least partially responsible for her being ousted as mayor, though she flounced back into office in 2004.

I turned 26 in April.

In May, velvetpage and I had supper with Dragonlance creator Margaret Weis and her husband Don Perrin, and did an interview I wrote up for three different publications. None of them paid anything, mind you!

In June we celebrated our first wedding anniversary. Later that summer we went on an impromptu vacation, with no direction in mind except “Ottawa and maybe Quebec.” It was out first vacation as a married couple, aside from our honeymoon, and in hindsight I should have planned it a bit better. Still, we managed to explore some very pleasant parts of rural Quebec, and even managed to get to Montreal for an afternoon.

Doloreaux went to print that summer (I believe), and I was enthusiastic about my chances of becoming a “name” in the RPG world. I’d yet to actually play Ironclaw on a regular basis, though I’d hooked up with shurhaian at least once to generate characters.

In November I attended the last Primedia Convention, where I hung out with thebitterguy, senexmacdonald, and redeem147. Primemedia / Conthulhu became an event I really looked forward to, and convinced me that I enjoyed dwelling in “con space.” I decided to attend more SF and gaming cons, and even resolved to attend one of those intimidating “furry” conventions that I’d heard so many scary things about. I spent a lot of time on FurryMUCK, chatting with normanrafferty and athelind, among many others.

As the year ended, I was largely content. Life had settled into a new routine. I was convinced that I’d found my niche, and fully expected to remain in small-town journalism for the remainder of my career.

It was about this time that I first developed an idea of where I wanted to be in, say, 2025.

I wanted to be a minor SF author, living in largish comfortably cluttered Victorian house somewhere in Hamilton or close by, with a lot of books. I wanted to be someone who was famous enough to be invited to medium-sized conventions a few times a year, but otherwise comfortably anonymous.

I still think that’s a good goal.

Comments

[noondaypaisley.livejournal.com]

I'll have a go, please.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Let's go a bit earlier... 1982!