Nostalgia, Nintendo and the Need to Clean

Last updated on March 23rd, 2021 at 09:55 pm

Somewhere along the road, I lost a week. Whether it was from an Icepocalypse in Toronto that displaced us from our home, leaving it without power for 30 hours; a nasty illness making it much harder stay jolly (and/or conscious) through the 4-day celebration that is our family’s Christmas; or simply underestimating the wealth of family and friends we have that wants to meet DoomzToo, I suddenly found myself at the tail end of December with entirely too much content left to write!

A sane man would quit, patting himself on the back for the best effort he could’ve possibly put out in a year, and rest on his laurels promising to do a better job the next year.

Unfortunately for me, no one ever mistakes me for a sane man.

In an effort to make up for lost time, I’ve written. Not the easiest when you have a son who refuses to sleep without being held after all the attention he got at Christmas, but in those 5-minute spurts where he isn’t fighting the urge to shut his eyes and catch some Zs, that’s what I’m doing.

So feast your eyes on the next instalment of my year-end wrap-up, and if I don’t manage to knock all these 100 stories out before we’re singing Auld Lang Syne on the 1st, just remember this—I left 2013 with a roar, not a whimper.

On with the show!

Previous Posts:

• DO ALL THE THINGS: The 2013 100 Wrap-up 1-10: Driving, Drawing And Dining
• DO ALL THE THINGS: The 2013 100 Wrap-up 11-20: Birthdays, BiSC And Blogging
• DO ALL THE THINGS: The 2013 100 Wrap-Up 21-30: Social Media, Stocks and a SHEvolution Gone Wrong
• DO ALL THE THINGS: The 2013 100 Wrap-Up 31-40: Audiophilia, Authorship and Altitudinal Consumption

The 2013 100, Items 41-50: Nostalgia, Nintendo and the Need to Clean

41. Start blogging internally at work again
42. Call my grandparents more often
43. Turn my negatives and slides into digital images
44. Sort through the magazines and clippings I have strewn about the house
45. Get at least one design submitted to Threadless
46. Upgrade the lenses on my camera
47. Have my family over more often
48. Play the Wii and PS3 games I haven’t touched
49. Attend a TED/TEDx Talk
50. Read all my old yearbook signings and candygrams to get a better understanding of the journey I’ve travelled

41: Start blogging internally at work again

At work, we’re encouraged to make use of our internal blogging/social media platform, which I think’s pretty cool. In theory, it’d break down the barriers between the various areas and support knowledge sharing at a level better than we’ve ever seen.

The problem? No one has time to write.

I see things every day I’d love to teach—how to work faster in Excel; how to write a solid business case; why it’s important to clean up after you nasty self in the washroom—but with the hectic schedules I keep on the job, I have no time to share the knowledge I’ve amassed, which sucks because we’d all be far better off sharing knowledge than keeping it to ourselves.

In 2014, I hope we can share knowledge more readily at work. Separate pools of data, expertise and information have made my job particularly difficult, and I’d love to help find a better way to do it all.

STATUS: Ain’t nobody got time for that!

42: Call my grandparents more often

I’m a bad grandchild.

I’m sure many of us can relate—we get older, we get busier, and we make less time for family.

My grandparents were a huge part of my life growing up—in my early years, I used to go to school a few minutes’ drive from my grandma’s, and my brothers and I would hang out in her basement while waiting for Mom to finish work. There were even the times where she’d cook dinner for my grandpa, hop in her car, and drive 15 minutes across town so I wouldn’t need to walk home from the train station on a cold winter day.

We were close, but my Mom’s grandparents moved away for a bit when I was in my early teens, and I became a different person since. My paternal grandmother’s always been in town—but we grow older. Our priorities change. We often spend less time with our families as we go through those teenage and young adult years, preferring to go “find ourselves” and build the networks around us.

Now, a bit older and a bit wiser, I want DoomzToo to know his family. We’re not around forever, and while I haven’t dealt with much death in my life up close and personal, I know that we only have so much time, and need to take advantage of what time we have while everyone’s still here.

So this one is definitely…

STATUS: On to the next year!

43: Turn my negatives and slides into digital images

STATUS: SO done.

44: Sort through the magazines and clippings I have strewn about the house

Definitely discussed this a bit back in Item 36, but let me give a little more context.

I keep a bunch of magazines and newspaper clippings around, convinced they all connect to something greater. Articles on style that could morph into a guidebook on dressing. Ads and promotional materials that inspire layouts and infographics. My office was like a chaotic idea factory, mini-projects strewn all over the room in various stages of completion.

But when DoomzToo came into the picture, I went from this…

…to this.

So obviously, sorting all this stuff out isn’t only for my mental health—there’s only so much space in a 1000-square foot home, and it’s not like this family’s shrinking!

Next year, even though I have a stack of books waiting to be read, I hope to find some time to get through all this stuff I’ve collected, and either really start to do something with these ideas or get off the pot.

So to speak.

STATUS: On to the next year!

45: Get at least one design submitted to Threadless

2007-2010 marked my graphic tee years, where a new career peppered with Casual Fridays and a bachelorhood peppers with disposable income made Threadless a huge part of my life. I’d scour the site for sales, trying to get in on their limited-edition runs to look fresh on the northern side of the border. While dozens of shirts would eventually fill my closet, I always wanted to try my hand at designing some of their shirts, partly to prove to myself that I could do it, and partly because of the lofty cash prizes they offer!

I still have a ton of sketches on my computer for t-shirt designs, and I need to get my design game up in 2014 to finally see if they’ve got what it takes to become real clothes!

STATUS: On to the next year!

46: Upgrade the lenses on my camera

Oh, this one most definitely went down. In April, I decided to take the plunge and invest in a day-to-day lens that’d make me proud of my shots—I found it in Canon’s EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM.

Early in 2013, I knew we were expecting and that I was going to BiSC, expecting some wild times to go down. 2013 was a year of special moments—why not invest in a lens that could handle the demand for stellar photography?

Photography’s a dangerous hobby, though—the more you do it, the more you see you need to pay to play! With my old gear, I eventually started noting limitations when I was shooting, like horrible low-light performance or the time it takes to autofocus; but I learned the lesson most when shooting a 1st birthday cake smash for my nephew, and finding that the gear I had at the time wasn’t up to keeping up with the little guy. With a baby around, you often only get one shot to capture a moment—I’d only beat myself up if I didn’t have the gear to keep up!

But now, with one of the sharpest lenses Canon has to offer, what I lost from the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 wide-angle lens‘ composition or the Canon EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6‘s zoom distance was soon forgotten with the ridiculous amount of clarity and colour I get in my photos. A great photographer can make stellar shots from a crappy camera, yes, but never discount how much of a difference great glass can make!

My hope is that I’ll eventually get some coin in from my creative pursuits to improve the rest of my kit. My dream set? In addition to my current power lens…

• A Canon EOS 5D Mark III
• A Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM
• A Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM
• (the Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L USM would be a good addition afterwards, though!)

But the time for that will come… when it comes.

STATUS: SO done.

47: Have my family over more often

I promise you—having a kid will definitely make this one a lot easier.

I originally thought I’d do monthly sessions with my brothers over drinks or stop by the ‘rents regularly or something, but with my baby brother moving to Ottawa for work and DoomzToo on the way, everything just got waylaid.

Instead, I’ve seen more of my family these past 7 weeks than I’ve seen of them in a while.

As DoomzToo grows, I’m pretty sure that isn’t gonna change.

SUCCESS!!!

STATUS: SO done.

48: Play the Wii and PS3 games I haven’t touched

Not only am I a horrible grandson, I’m not so hot as a gamer, either.

My first console was a Nintendo Entertainment System back in Christmas ’88, a $170 investment from my family that took me from beating Super Mario Bros. at 5, to duking it out on the Nintendo Wii 20 years, a dozen gaming systems and hundreds of games later.

But you forget that gaming is one of the many things you do when you’re younger. As you move on to other phases in life, other things take importance, and your life’s suddenly filled with priorities, goals and ambitions, and the nightly marathon gaming sessions suddenly come to a halt.

My brother was generous enough to get us a Playstation 3 as a wedding gift, and despite nabbing a stack of games to re-live my youth (I was the GameStop associate’s best friend that day, let me tell you), my PS3’s become a glorified DVD player and Netflix streaming device for Sarah.

This goal was a resounding fail. I’d have better luck winning the lottery.

STATUS: Ain’t nobody got time for that!

49: Attend a TED/TEDx Talk

We emulate the behaviours of the world around us. If you work in an office with frumpy dressers, it’s a struggle to keep dressing your best. If the people around you aren’t ambitious, it’s hard to get your ideas off of the ground.

Whenever I go to one of the events in The Art Of series, I feel encouraged after listening to speakers and meeting new, like-minded people to discuss ideas and opinions. I’ve been lucky enough to win book bundles from a couple of the sessions, keeping me going as I delve deeper into the speakers’ thoughts.

While I may not yet have the clout nor the capital for Moses Znaimer’s ideacity, the calibre of inspiration you can get at a TED Talk is something you seldom find anywhere else!

Having missed the boat on September’s TEDxToronto, I’ve followed their Twitter account and hope to finally join the action in 2014!

STATUS: On to the next year!

50: Read all my old yearbook signings and candygrams to get a better understanding of the journey I’ve travelled

Some time ago, I cracked my box of candygrams open to take a look at some of the parts of my past I’ve forgotten that shaped me into who I am today.

Yeah, but I barely looked inside.

It’s not that I didn’t want to—it’s that with everything moving forward as quickly as it had in 2013, I didn’t give myself much chance to take a look back.

But it’s all too easy to get caught up in the moment, not taking our past experiences to better help our current selves to live our best lives possible.

I want to find more time to just remember all the stories. I’ve been so busy creating that I have little recollection of who I was before this crazy journey began.

And you can only improve yourself by better understanding yourself.

So next year, it’s time to sit down on the easy chair, pull out the box, and re-introduce myself… to myself.

STATUS: On to the next year!

And that’s our halfway point! Join us next time as we discuss how I’d likely die on the first day of a Zombie Apocalypse, the irony of being a public service bureaucrat who understands next to nothing about politics, and my new plans for the month of November.

A bientôt,