What a year… I don’t have a ton of blog posts written over the last year to pull from, but that doesn’t mean it was uneventful. 2015 will be remembered as a very mixed emotion year.

We started by moving from Georgetown to Guelph, heading “west” meant being able to afford a nicer place to live. We moved in the winter, and it sucked. I am hoping that my next move won’t be while there is snow on the ground. We wisely asked everyone we knew for help and even hired some movers to take the load off the backs of family and friends. It was so nice to get out of the apartment we had in Georgetown, and into something nice and new. We couldn’t have done it without the assistance and support we received.

I went to a fiction writing seminar at the University of Guelph, where I got to stretch my creativity. I really enjoyed it and hope to find more ways to take advantage of being in a larger city now, though I will say we didn’t do much unique to Guelph during our first year here.

On the creativity front, Annie and I got back into working on Second Class Supers, and I’m happy to say that the Kickstarter backers will see their rewards soon. The book is available in eBook format on Amazon.ca and softcover on Amazon.com. I am hoping to see the paperback released on Amazon.ca shortly as well. One of the coolest things was holding a printed proof of our novel. We are already sketching out the beginnings of our next collaboration.

Annie and I celebrated our one year anniversary of being married, and if 2015 has taught me anything, it is to celebrate our relationship often. Annie has continued to be a source of strength and comfort as well as stillness and joy. All things that I need, especially in the last quarter of this year.

In the summer, Annie and I took a trip out to British Columbia to visit her sister and family. We drove to Kelowna, stayed for two weeks and drove back to Ontario. The driving, while not always interesting made the trip into an adventure, and being back in B.C. felt really nice.

The biggest thing to happen in 2015 for me was that during our trip out west, we found out that Annie was pregnant. We had been trying through fertility treatments for a while and weren’t expecting such great news. We called our baby Widget until at eighteen weeks we found out that Widget was a girl, and so we named her Lily. Unfortunately, eighteen weeks was all the time we had with Lily, as she passed away on November 7th, one week before my 33rd birthday. We are still both constantly hit with waves of grief due to our loss.

Annie has been home from work since Lily’s passing, allowing her time to heal. She has been crocheting and watching Stargate SG-1. She will be heading back early in the new year with the hope that it will be easy for her to pick up where she left off. We have had so much support in our time of grief; I can’t even explain how helpful it has all been.

I suffer from depression and have said a few times this year, “bad things shouldn’t happen to people with depression…” It has been a struggle, but I continue to work hard and feel like I’ve been coping well.

As for my job, 10up has been mostly amazing, and I’ve enjoyed working with their highly skilled staff to complete some really interesting projects. I wish I could tell you all about the work I’ve been doing but nearly all of it is not public knowledge, but if you check out the 10up blog, you won’t have to scroll too far to see at least one project I was involved with. What might be surprising to some of you though is that recently I have decided to move on. It was a hard decision to make, but I felt that a move was necessary to have the opportunity that I am most looking for right now.

Starting in the new year, I’ll be working for Fortrus Financial, a small financial training firm based near where I live. My title will be the Director of Technology and the job will still provide me with a great deal of flexibility and the opportunity to work from home the majority of the time. I’m excited by it and hope to use all of the talents and skills I’ve built up while learning a few new tricks. I’ll have more on my new position once I start it.

I am hopeful that I’ll find more time to blog in the new year. That I will once again make this a priority. I can’t fathom how many things I’ve likely forgotten to mention in this summary of my year, and that saddens me. My memory for events is horrible, and looking back, my only regret for 2015 is that I didn’t write more, take more pictures and otherwise record what happened to me.

I’m looking forward to going to Kingston to see family for Christmas, and be back in time to celebrate with Annie’s family. I hope everyone has a safe and merry Christmas.