Background : Journal timeline

What follows is an outline of the things that have happened in my life since I started keeping an online journal. A lot of the older entries are very poorly written and unedited; if I weren’t so sentimental, I would have deleted them a long time ago.

2000

During my first week of journal entries, I was enrolled in mini-courses at Queen’s University, where I decided to use my many hours in the computer lab to start an online journal.

After returning home from Kingston, the winding down of my high school career lasted until the end of June. Fun things like not going to prom and avoiding end-of-year parties make up the bulk of my writing.

I worked a desk job from late June to the middle of August. It was at around this point that Grand Royal offered me freelance work maintaining the official Bran Van 3000 web site. This allowed me to quit work a couple of weeks early.

As August ended, I wrote excitedly about going to university in Toronto. This quickly transformed into me whining about frosh week. Things went downhill from there as I found it harder and harder to go to classes.

I started talking to Gillian in September, and we were officially an item by mid-November (despite never having met). I visited her in December, and she visited me in mid-January. We broke up shortly before she left for a six-month trip to Luxembourg.

2001

After the end of my relationship with Gillian, I returned to not going to classes and looking forward to being a university dropout in September. I wrote exams in April and passed all of my courses.

Before I went back to Ottawa, I met Erika. Our relationship lasted until I left for home, falling apart in May when my desk job from the summer before swallowed me once again.

In July I went to KrazyFest and worked my desk job.

In August I stopped writing journal entries for a while and worked my desk job.

In September I moved to Toronto. Andrew and Johnston had already found us a place to live: the second floor of a house near St. Clair West. For the first six months, I had no source of income and spent my time working on web sites.

2002

In January, I started a job at a smoothie bar. I was working for a lower hourly wage than when I started my first job at sixteen. Office work had spoiled me.

In February, I started seeing a lot of Kerry, who I had met on New Year’s Eve. I was very happy for the time that we were together. She broke things off in early June.

I quit my job a few weeks later and was again without income for July and most of August. I met Alex in July. We started an on-and-off relationship that would last through to September.

In August, I started working in the returns department of a home furnishings retailer with Scandinavian origins.

In November, I began spending a lot of time with a girl from work. I ended our relationship in the middle of December.

2003

Months passed very quickly at the start of the year. In March, I decided I needed a change, and I gave notice to my landlord, not knowing where I was going to live in May.

In April, everything fell into place: Jeff and Amy said I could live with them starting the next month. Also, Jeff invited me to go along with Cuff The Duke on a tour to Victoria and back, and I put considerable effort into booking three weeks off work so I wouldn’t have to quit my job.

In June, two weeks after returning from tour, I quit my job.

I spent the summer living just with Jeff because Amy was in Goderich. She returned in September, and shortly after that I began seeing E        .

In October, I went on another tour with Cuff The Duke to Victoria and back, this time with Sloan as well.

In November my relationship with E         started to fall apart. In December I ended it.

2004

Andrew, Matt and I registered Doublenaut as a business in January and started doing that full-time. This meant living off of savings for too many months.

Also in January, E         and I started seeing each other again, but only sort of, and in a manner that ended up hurting us both a fair bit until June when we gave up.

In February, I was invited to read one of my short stories at a reading in Ottawa. I decided I would write a lot more after that. By March, I had given up on this goal.

By the summer I was working a lot and had very little money to spend. Jeff, Amy and I decided that we would move out in May.

In May I moved in with Matt, Maggie and Mez.

Doublenaut found an office in June, and I made plans to move into Mimi’s basement in September.

By July we had moved into the office and started pretending we had jobs. It went pretty well. I spent more time at the office than at home.

In September I moved into Mimi’s basement. The ceilings are low, there are no windows, and I don't have a phone; it's the best place I've found to live in Toronto.

In a few months I'll be 23. All I want for my birthday is for Doublenaut to be out of debt.