I started 2019 in Calgary, having just landed the day before. I woke up in a rented apartment with fairy lights and an almost impossible quiet. I had told myself for so much of my adult life that my super-power was that I would always be okay… and then something happened near the end of 2018 and for a good long while, I wasn’t okay. And I needed to run away. I had to figure out where to go from there.
January 1st 2019 was the first day of ten calendar months that I would be away from home. Last year was a year with more alone-time than maybe any other in my life — a quietude which I tried to fill and inflate with endless podcasts and music and books and time spent on facebook. From day one of the adventure, I knew I would have plenty of time to indulge my inner introvert, but having all that time made me… afraid. Afraid of collapsing into that not-being-okay. Afraid of the lonely dark. So I gave myself a goal, a resolution for 2019.
I taped up an affirmational poster in my room: 2019 was the year I told myself, ‘I am an Avatar of Excitement!’. A year to be a force in the world for unexpected tinglings and happy nerves. A year that was more than just running away. That was my new year’s resolution. I feel I accomplished a fair amount of that. I tried.
Thank you to everyone who made my year feel worthwhile. Thank you to Evan and Kendra and Sydney and Cameron and Matthew and Mandie and Ashton and Kristin and Becca and Toby and Helen and Jamie and Shannon and Carly and Bea and Jacqui and Ian and Gareth and Josh and Charlene and Olivia and Ken and Kelly and Rachel and Miranda and Danny and Abigail and Nyala and Kieran and Katelyn and Alina and everyone else.
I don’t know what my goal for 2020 will be, if I choose to have one. Still sussing that out. But I’m happy to have had my year of adventure.
Andrew Wade 
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