2016

Hey 2016... I feel like I speak for almost everyone when I say... go fuck yourself on the shit train you fucking rode in on.

Now that I got that out of the way.... how was 2016 you ask? Well...

Alongside the many tragic musical deaths 2016 brought us (I listened to nothing but Bowie for a month, honestly), 2016 was soul-crushing for me in multiple other ways. I began the year unemployed, but with two terrific people close to me whom I could always count upon to be there for me in times of despair or devastating loneliness. Few questions asked.

My financial misfortunes took an astonishing turn for the worse in 2016. My crippling OSAP debt (Merry fucking Christmas to you too) intensified, Toronto Hydro threatened me multiple times with disconnecting my service (which in the winter months is apparently illegal, Merry fucking Christmas thanks) and I still owe the University of Toronto thousands of dollars in unpaid tuition fees because again, OSAP loves me. They even stole hundreds of dollars from my bank account and would have kept doing so if I hadn't ordered my bank to stop them.

But I've been in this shitty situation for a while. 2016 began and I was wading in it. But 2016 is a truly piece of shit year not just because of my unsolvable debt problems, but because it was a year when everything I'd attempt to rise above the shin-deep sewer of feces I was in, I'd end up with shit on my face every. Single. Time. I was overweight in February (about 210 pounds) because I was sad, unemployed and bored. The weather got better and I knew my baseball season was gonna start soon, so I worked out hard to get myself in better shape. I ate better, I went for jogs by the beach, I did 50ish pushups a day, all because I didn't want to let my team down. I was coming off back-too-back off seasons (maybe because my head wasn't in the right place, who knows) and I wanted this season to be my comeback. Where I showed everyone this is who I am, when I work hard I'm unstoppable. I lost 20 pounds in a month and a half (which shows how shitty my diet was then) just in time for the season to start.

And I fucking sucked.

All the hard work, all the effort to get myself back in decent athletic shape, was pointless. I had the worst season of my life, and one of the worst in league history. I had one hit in twenty at-bats. Which in baseball terms... is 'find something else to do' level. My defense was excellent (as usual), I worked intelligent at-bats and drew a ton of walks (as usual again) and frankly, I hit the ball hard when I was up there. You don't go 1-20 in a season, yet only strike out twice without a severe slash of dreadful luck. And during one of those two strikeouts, I was having a severe panic attack and chased a pitch 2 feet off the plate. 2016 is the year the concept of luck died.

But as discouraging as the sport I love treated me (I was honestly ready to quit and never come back... sorry boys) losing those two people in 2016, whom I held so close, was harder. One was a tight friend, someone I could go to in any moment of crisis... and his smart perspective would always lift me up. I'd think something was the end of the world, we'd chill together, and everything wasn't so dire or tragic. Just like that. Our friendship felt apart suddenly and instantly in a single night, in perhaps the stupidest way imaginable. I still wonder how these events combined to create this moment in time. But that's 2016.

The other close relationship I lost was much, much deeper. I don't want to drag up personal details here, but all I wanna say is that loneliness stabs just a little bit deeper since we stopped speaking to each other. There's something missing in every moment that I can't share with her... guess I just have to adjust to that feeling. 

On this upcoming Sunday, 2016 is over. I hope you join me in a toast, casting aside the shittiest fucking year maybe that ever was. Did you know Donald Trump was elected President of the United fucking States? Yeah, 2016.

But I want to be optimistic. I have to be optimistic. It's a defect in my nature, perhaps. I can do better than this, I can be better. We can do better, my friends, we can be better.

Let's stand up for one another, especially now. Peace and love.