Annual Evaluation - 2014

Another year has gone by and isn’t it a wonderful thing when you can look back on 2014 and say “wow, that was a terrific year”?

I had 9 months of routine, with working in an industry that was going through a crisis.  I worked with my brother on a number of construction projects around the homestead and I prepared for my new farming venture from getting day old chicks and raising them up to be star producers, well ahead of their peers.  I learned a new craft (card making) and started a new health regimen.  I took a chance on myself and went into early retirement and after three months I can say I am quite successful.  No crying over spilled milk for me.

I did not do any travelling this year and yet I feel as though I have had a lot of adventures, perhaps by living through my friends’ experiences.  I’ve done a lot of reading about Poland in anticipation of my trip next summer.  I’ve also done a lot of reading of “old time” books, and pondering the question of old time values, wondering why society has strayed so far from those values.  I’ve spent a lot of time this year just wondering about world events, media coverage, the complete blitz of celebrity love-ins, a lack of society’s moral compass, and what an ordinary person can do to effect change.  I don’t have any answers except one, be the best person you can be, let the rest fall in place.

For the last couple of years I have found myself irritated at the constant stream of awards that the entertainment industry gives itself.  It seems to me that it starts in January and doesn’t stop until Christmas.  There must be a dozen different music awards, then there are the television awards (daytime and night time), then there are the People’s Choice Awards, the Golden Globe, the Oscars, all the Canadian award shows, until I am so fed up I refused to watch any of them even the Oscars.  I think it’s time the industry slows down and takes a look at itself and I think it’s time people start to consider if it’s healthy to hand out awards because a celebrity hiccupped in China. 

And to top off my thought on this year, I say shame on Hollywood for making a movie about assassinating a real person and calling that entertainment.  Not your best moment.