2007 in Review

It is thirty days since I last posted here. Normally, this past semester when I've finally logged in to put up another post, I've been amazed at how long it's been, sure that it can't be THAT long since I wrote something. Typically, such episodes happen about two weeks after the post previous. Not this time. This time, I can totally believe it. I simply haven't felt like writing anything of length online is so long. The Barrow-Downs cannot really be said to have felt my neglect, since I hardly write there other than in the oft-neglected "Tapestry of Dreams" RPG, but I haven't even been logging in. Now, a large part of this has to do with having been back in Olds for the majority of the month, where the internet has been shifty and slow at best this past month, and that following right on Finals... but the truth is that I just haven't felt that interested in writing anything online.

However, let's try and turn that around a little bit with a look at 2007. My 20th year came to an end on February 11th, with my birthday, and I ceased being a teenager. I now feel well and truly an adult and high school is becoming an ever more distant memory, a fact I do not regret in the slightest. For some people, high school are "the best years of their lives", but if that were the case, then I would be shuddering in terror at my future.

Mind you, 2007 was no bed of roses. Although it was an excellent year academically, which saw me achieve high grades and immense fun, the four months between school years was marred beyond much recovery by the broken leg.

All the same, though the broken leg was utterly undesirable, the fact is those four months were probably the most notable ones of 2007. Not because they were exciting. As far as interesting goes, they were rather lacking. No, it was the routine elements of the summer that were the most important for the future course of my life, I suspect. The broken leg, first of all, gave me a good, long look at my vocation and forced me to slow down. It also forced me to deal with being dependent on people and incapacitated, and it gave me a much greater empathy for those who are ill or injured.

Furthermore, as a result of breaking my leg, I ended up working in the Archdiocesan Archives, which is pretty much my dream job and on which I learned tonnes about the history of the Archdiocese, and Western Canadian history in general. I also moved into the rectory at Annunciation Parish, which was an excellent experience and would not have happened otherwise.

The few excursions out of daily routine during those summer months were weekends, and they saw me at various landmark occasions in people's lives: ordination, marriage, graduation. Attending them highlighted the changes in my own life: Andrew's ordination was the first I attended of a fellow seminarian, a tangible sign of my own solid placement as a seminarian. My brother Daniel's grad brought home in a gut-punching kind of way that fact I really and truly have moved on from school; now my siblings are starting to graduate, and with two of us gone and the rest poised to go off like dominoes, my family has definitely slid into a different demographic. The weddings also highlighted the same. Andrea and Aaron's wedding was the first one of friends in more-or-less my peer group. Give it another year or two and I will start attending weddings of people my age from school (be it high school or college). My cousin's wedding was a foreshadowing of sibling weddings to come.

I returned to seminary in the fall older and, I hope, wiser. It has been a completely different year from my first, despite having ended up in the same room and being on the same place in the social pecking order (ie. the bottom). Half the seminary is composed of seminarians new to Edmonton, and this combined with a confidence in my knowledge of how the place works has led to a much different sense of how I fit into the community, which has changed its face dramatically from last year.

At Concordia, the changes are vastly greater. Whereas last year I was something of a loner, academically keen but socially shy, this year has seen me with scarcely a moment when I have no one to hang out with. Mostly, this shift has developed parallel to my near-accidental involvement in the Philosophy Club, but there is also a conscious change of mind behind it. Part of it stems from the groundwork laid in the winter semester, before I broke my leg, when a year of classes with people drew to a close and I began simply through dint of time to get to know people, but most it is attitude. Possibly it comes from the aloneness of the broken leg, possibly from the exuberance of being back in school after a dreary summer, possibly I just grew up, but I have been a different person. Not seriously different, perhaps. Maybe not different at all to the outside viewer... but on the inside I feel dramatically different.

And now 2008 dawns.

I have modest expectations for this year. I will finish my 2nd year of college with a six-course semester, then do a spring course which will make up for my under-coursed first semester. I hope to be working in the Archives again and to live in a rectory in Edmonton. I have my name down for going to Quebec City in June for the International Eucharistic Congress, and while I expect that to be excellent, I'm not really looking towards it at the moment. In the fall I'll be back for my last year of my undergraduate degree.

Beyond those external developments, there are of course personal objectives I'd like to fulfill, but none are of a weighty nature. Mostly, it's not about major change, but about staying the course and gradual improvement. I lost weight over the summer when I was on crutches, and although I kept it off until Christmas, I'd like to not only keep it off in the coming year, but possibly get into a more active life. I'd like to start developing a personal prayer life outside of the Liturgy of the Hours, though with an eye to staying the course, it might be best to pray that I keep on track with saying that, for the moment.

At school I expect to continue to do well academically--that goes without saying, but with regards to extracurricular life, staying the course is a bit more of a challenge. Being back in Olds, old friendships have been a lot on my mind of late, and I find myself distressingly apathetic about people I knew before I left for seminary, and even somewhat similarly about online friends. This concerns me, not so much because I dislike being out of touch, but because friendship--close friendship--is not something I've ever achieved easily or often, and I fret over whether a similar apathy will affect the friendships I'm making in Edmonton, a concern which simultaneously makes me wonder if its worth the effort and terrified at losing people dear to me.

Finally, today at Mass I decided I want to get to know Mary better this year. The Virgin Mother of God figures large into the culture of the Church and the lives of the Saints are littered with stories of devotion to her. As a future priest, but also as an individual, I want a greater share in that.