While I certainly kept myself busy and reasonably well entertained, 2025 was a real horror-show in terms of broader trends and political stories, including the surrender of any kind of meaningful Canadian commitment to combating climate change and outright racism, sexism and transphobia taking center stage in the US and the UK. And one more year of the unthinkable conditions facing residents of Gaza and the Ukraine. I do find it harder and harder to justify living in a comfortable bubble (though one that continues to shrink!), and when I get in this sort of a mood (fairly often these days) it is really hard to enjoy myself. What I ought to do is carve out time to volunteer, either at an animal shelter or maybe at Eastview. Looking over my calendar that seems impossible without giving up a lot of the cultural activities that I engage in, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't continue to work towards doing better.
I didn't donate much of anything during Giving Tuesday, but I did finally get out a bunch of donations right before the cut-off at year's end (with two or three of them matched!). I ended up donating to United Way of Greater Toronto, the Toronto Star's Santa Claus Fund, YMCA, the TSO, Tafelmusik, Medicins Sans Frontiers (instead of the Red Cross as discussed here), the Heart and Stroke Foundation, Factory Theatre, Coal Mine Theatre, Eastview Community Centre and Shakespeare Bash'd (though that last one doesn't qualify as a charity unfortunately). These are basically the local institutions that I spend a lot of time with, and it makes sense to put my donations there. I suppose I have just enough time to get under the wire with a donation to Esprit Orchestra, so let me go off and do that before it is too late.
I don't really do resolutions, but I would like to get more serious about getting my weight under control. I was doing pretty well, even through the early holidays (maintaining if not losing any weight) but these past two weeks I've given in to temptation, not helped by generally cruddy weather and thinking too much about the state of the world (and how 2026 really doesn't seem to offer anything better). I've managed to get in a few extra swimming sessions so will try to keep that up. I did skip going to the gym last weekend, but it looks like the gym is actually open on New Year's Day (for all those other people with resolutions on getting fit!), so I'll head out fairly soon and plan to go again on Sunday, and I guess I'll be caught up then.
I do think I should be able to make some progress on my various creative writing projects, starting with finishing transcribing and doing a few immediate edits on my Stratford piece. Given that I have gotten some positive feedback for the first section, I want to see how the whole piece works. I will hear on Jan. 9 or 10 if I am picked in round 2 of the Toronto Fringe. And after this, I want to pull all the various pieces of my planners' opus together and see how long it is and what is missing. And get it transcribed! After that, I can decide if it really is a podcast or a novel or something else entirely.
I should try to restart work on this quilt I abandoned many year ago. Given that I am definitely not doing any more jigsaw puzzles until the cats are a bit older and less likely to chew up the pieces, I might actually be able to make some headway on it. But I won't beat myself up if it doesn't happen...
One "resolution" that I may be able to stick to is to work my way through all the DVDs that I own before adding even more to the collection. Of course, that will be a challenge as I just bought an Oshima set and then the Bergman BFI Vol. 4 set (which includes his late films Cries and Whispers, Scenes from a Marriage, Autumn Sonata and Fanny and Alexander). Given that I have had the 3rd box set for some time (with the Winter Trilogy and Persona) and never cracked it, that might be the place to start.
It's probably not hopeless, however. I already stay up far too late, so it will probably not matter much if I watch a movie now and again. That's how I was able to watch Almodovar's Live/Flesh early on Christmas Day, and then early this week I watched What Have I Done to Deserve This? and Godard's Vivre Sa Vie (both with my son in the late evening, not overnight). I really am extremely close to wrapping up all of Almodovar, and I think maybe I could rewatch Bergman's Winter Trilogy, then alternate through the many Rohmer and Godard films I own, then maybe alternate through Kurosawa and Ozu and even a bit of Naruse (if it isn't something I have just seen at TIFF). Indeed, I am scheduled to see Flowing on Jan 2 (and I'll have to somehow quickly make it back from MOCA!) and Lightning on Jan 3.
On New Year's Eve, I ended up going in to work, stopping at the Market Gallery on the way, depositing a check at the bank, having some Indian food for lunch (many but not all of the restaurants in the food court were shutting up early), putting in a bunch of insurance claims I had been sitting on and working a bit more on a poster for TRB Crossroads next month. So pretty busy, even if not that productive work-wise... Then I went up to Paradise to see Billy Wilder's The Apartment.
I'd never seen the entire thing, only a few snippets here and there, and I enjoyed it very much.* I think I passed on an opportunity to see it at TIFF, as it just would have been too long a day, following that up with a Almodovar film or two. Anyway, seeing it New Year's Eve in a great movie theatre with a nearly full crowd was pretty special. (I might go ahead and become a member at Paradise in 2026 now that they seem to have enough movies to make it worthwhile.)
For dinner, I stopped off at an Ethiopian restaurant nearby and settled up a debt I owed the owner, so that worked out well. I managed to make it home right around 10, and we watched the countdown, and I crashed fairly soon after that. Again, just hoping that 2026 will be a better year, though I am not really expecting this, based on recent trends (and the uglier aspects of human nature which are all coming out unapologetically these days).
Edit (01/01): Somehow I missed the news that Herbert Gans passed away back in April! I guess because the NY Times and the Washington Post are both paywalled, and it didn't make the news in a lot of other places. It is sad, but he had a good run (97!). I met him one time when I was considering applying to Columbia for urban sociology, but he and I weren't on the same wavelength, as I was more interested in archival-based research and less going out and talking to people, which was his preferred research method. It's a real telling sign of how the commurb listserv has faded into irrelevance (since roughly 2021) that I didn't find out about it there, as he was quite an active member of that.
* I'm not really sure why this works and Dawn Powell's Angels on Toast doesn't. The dialogue is definitely wittier (and would get wittier in her later New York novels). Maybe there is just less focus on the wives and their points of view (in The Apartment), which generally made the whole thing feel far more sordid in Angels on Toast, even though objectively the male executives in both were lechers. If anything, the executives in The Apartment abuse their power much more than those in Angels on Toast (where they typically avoid having affairs with women that work for them, though there is one major exception towards end of Angels on Toast). It could be that the women entering into these love affairs (in The Apartment) are portrayed as happy-go-lucky types that know these are just passing affairs (with a few exceptions). I guess basically it is the lightness of touch which Wilder has on display here (and Powell would acquire in some of her subsequent novels).
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