Goodbye "This Week's Pairings"

My first year of posting (2012) paired novels with either wine or tea, and I ambitiously called the blog "This Week's Pairings". Forcing myself to post weekly turned out to be a chore and took all the enjoyment out of it. So, I stopped! I would have loved to have posted something about a sewing project, a restaurant I visited, a play I watched, or anything else, but I had pigeon holed myself into being a book blogger, and doing so would have gone against the raison d'être of my blog.

It's been over a year since my last post, and really, you couldn't call what I did in early 2013 "regular". Life just got in the way. I moved from Ottawa to the GTA in the summer of 2012, and after taking a couple of months to settle in, I was able to get back into it. I was working a contract gig which gave me lots of free time to read and blog. Then, in early 2013, I started a new, full-time job. I knew it was going to require lots of overtime, but I didn't realise how much I would enjoy it. I'm in a great spot where I love my job so much, it doesn't really feel like work! But, after a year and half, I started to realise that I my career was starting to be the only thing to define me. I was losing the well-rounded person I used to be, to the point where I had difficultly having conversations with other people that didn't involve various work-related projects. Ugh! Who wants to be *that* person?

In an effort to branch out a little, I enrolled in a Part-Time MBA program. I've always been fond of structured learning, and it's a great way to clock in the required PD hours to maintain my accounting designation. I start in September 2014, and am looking forward to getting back to school mode and meeting new people.

Notable things that have kept me busy (outside of the office) since my last post:

• Trips to Chicago, Ottawa, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Vancouver, St Louis, Edmonton, Jasper, and Malaysia
• Road trip from Toronto to Nova Scotia through the US with puppies in tow (tax free shopping in New Hampshire is the bomb!)
• Day trips to various cute towns in Southern Ontario
• 2013 Stratford Festival: Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Blithe Spirit, and Othello
• 2014 Stratford Festival: Crazy for You, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Hay Fever
• I bought a sewing machine!
• Sold and bought a house (moving to the Niagara peninsula in the fall)

I started using this space as a way to get back into reading. A favourite childhood pastime that went by the wayside in exchange for textbooks, case studies and more recently long working hours and work related travel. Now, I need to use this space to comfort myself, to document and share the "life" portion of my failing work/life balance.

Admittedly, it's going to be a little self-indulgent :)



Goodbye This Weeks Pairings, and hello Fables, Foibles and Fancies.