My
2014
With
2014 having come to an end and as I do every year, I look back on the past
twelve months and relive the standout moments, both good and bad, that happened
to and for me. I look back on them to relive the memories of the fond ones and
to learn from the less than happier ones. In some cases, the moment or event
may have connotations for both, a kind of bittersweet episode of 2014.
I
look back on these moments, too, to take stock of my life and see where I am in
relationship to where I want to be. Younger people and, perhaps, single people
and individuals who aren’t parents or guardians may not be in a stage of their
lives where taking stock is as important but, for me, once I hit forty, I
really started to feel the need to assess this – to know where I am, who I am
and how far or near I am to being where and who I want to be. This annual self-assessment
took on greater importance when I became a father at thirty-nine.
So,
as you read on, relive the moments with me, which aren’t listed in any
particular order, and relive your own 2014 highlights.
1. Arsenal wins the FA Cup. I’ve been an Arsenal
Football Club fan since 1980 and have suffered the frustrations of not seeing
my team win any silverware for nine year and of seeing my team underperform
and/or perform brilliantly only to crumble during the second half of the
season. This year, however, Arsenal showed grit and came down from a very early
two-goal deficit to beat Hull City 3-2 and lift the trophy, albeit a newly
minted cup, of the oldest club tournament in the world.
2. Sticking with sports, 2014 was a World Cup year,
hosted by Brasil but bested by Germany. And, yes, I am a Germany fan. I grew up
in Hong Kong watching Hong Kong, English and German football. There weren’t
many chances to watch anything else and, while I am a self-proclaimed Anglophile,
I don’t have any direct blood ties to England. I’m also racially mixed –
Chinese, Filipino, German and Spanish – but for some reason I never clicked
with the Spanish National Team and the Filipino National Team has been making
international strides only recently. China almost competed in the World Cup in
1982, the first World Cup I truly followed, but it was then West Germany that
caught my eye. With my German blood it seemed natural and I’m also a fan of
Hamburger SV who, at the time, had a big hulking centre forward named Horst
Hrubesch with whom I felt some kind of simpatico as I was also a big hulking
centre forward. There were other players I liked too, of course: Pierre
Littbarksi, Hansi
Müller, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Manny Kaltz, to name a few. So, Germany
became the national team I would follow and has been my number one national
team ever since. So, to watch Die Mannschaft essentially breeze through the
tournament, including an 8-1 demolition of Brasil, in a word, I was overjoyed. Deutschland,
Deutschland über alles!
3. Another sports moment for 2014 was with my
volleyball team. I coach high school girls’ volleyball and, after over two
decades of coaching various sports, the girls helped me to win my first
championship. We won the Colonial Division of the Super Essex Conference of
Essex County, New Jersey and it came with years of hard work, sacrifice and,
I’ll admit, a little bit of luck. At one point in the season, the championship
might’ve been shared four ways but with my team (Columbia High School,
Maplewood, NJ) winning seven straight matches in the division and other teams
beating each other along the way, the title was ours and ours alone.
Additionally, at the end of the season, five of my girls were named to the
Colonial Division All-Conference Teams (two on first team, two on second and
one on the honourable mention squad) and one of them was named and chosen to
play in the New Jersey Senior All-Star showcase.
4. My son has grown, as expected, physically,
mentally and emotionally. One area that really struck me this year was his
confidence in the swimming pool, especially after he passed his 25-metre test.
Swimming is a sport and, I believe, a life skill. It’s also a great form of
exercise and recreation and, the minute after his passed his test and got his
wristband indicating so, he was in the pool doing things he’d never done before
– forward flips underwater, backward flips underwater, swimming along the
bottom of the pool between my legs. He’s
not ready to venture out into the ocean solo but just to see him grow in his
confidence and swimming technique was one of the best moments of 2014.
5. We Need Diverse Books. This campaign came to
fruition in 2014 and I discovered it when I attended Book Con in May in New
York City. Basically, this organisation promotes books for everyone, but from
my understanding mainly for young people, that have themes and protagonists and
other characters that better represent them. And by ‘them’ I mean ‘us’ – the
ethnic minority readers: the Asian, Black, Hispanic, and LGBTQ populations.
Looking back there have already been many books written about and/by authors
who fall in these minority groups but that was before such heavy-handed
classification appeared in bookstores and book listings. WNDB doesn’t say
there’s anything wrong with the books that are written by authors and with
protags who don’t fall into these minority groups. What it’s trying to do is
gain equal exposure to those that do without being called ‘ethnic books.’ Check
WNDB out. Here’s the link to its website. http://tinyurl.com/mqm7flh
6. With a friend away on vacation to visit family
and friends in The Philippines, my wife, son and I were able to use her place
and enjoy a three-day, two-night vacation in New York City during this past holiday
season. This may seem very innocuous to include in a Top Ten List, and taking
it for what at face value it probably is, but for me it had special impact. You
see, I used to spend a lot of time in NYC attending writing classes, visiting
museums, reading The Book Review
while sipping on a morning coffee at a café in The Village, writing in
bookstores as my wife took ballet classes; all art-related activities. I’d been
doing these things fairly regularly over the last twenty years of so. That is,
until life took hold other important things needed my time and attention. And,
sometimes, as humans are wont to do, in taking care of things, I forgot about
the things I used to do and the things that used to drive me So, while this
vacation was brief, it was different enough from the daily grind to be exciting
but familiar enough to a part of who I am that I’d forgotten that it reignited
the mojo inside – as a writer and as someone who wants to live life to its
fullest - that’s been dormant these past few years.
7. I ran my first road race in years last October.
Much like our mini-vacation, it rekindled some parts of me that I’d missed. I
used to be an avid runner and, for this race, I’d committed and trained
properly. On race day, although it was cold and wet, I didn’t shy away from the
challenge. Instead, as I used to do, I faced it and simply ran. While I’m much
slower than I was in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when I was running 6:50
miles and 21-minutes 5ks, I still ran well. I ran negative splits, felt physically
and mentally prepared and, based on his comments post-race, was an inspiration
to my son. Incidentally, my son ran his first road race – a kids’s 0.1 or so
mile sprint – a week before my race so running was on his mind and, perhaps, it
will become of one ‘our’ things as he gets older and stronger.
8. As a writer, I finished my second novel in 2014
and I pitched it so some agents. I’m still waiting to hear from a couple but
the responses I got at the Writer’s Digest Conference Pitch Slam were highly
positive. I’m hopeful that I’ll make major headway in my writing career in 2015
but, either way, to have finished a second novel feels really great – more than
a relief - and validates, at least in my mind, that I am a novelist; that I’m not simply a one-trick pony and that I do
have stories to tell.
9. My son earned his blue belt last month at his
most recent Taekwondo test. This is special for me because blue belt is the
first intermediate belt. My son is no longer a beginner and is on his way to
becoming an advanced student. Blue belt is special to me for a couple of other
reasons as well. When I got my blue belt, I’d contemplated giving up on
Taekwondo (and likely all martial arts) but my sister talked me into sticking
it out until black belt and deciding then whether to quit or not. Well, I stuck
it out and, as the saying goes, the rest if history. I’ve been a Taekwondoist
for twenty-nine years and I hold a master rank. My son, proudly wearing his
blue belt, feels the monumental level of his rank as well. He doesn’t get it
intellectually but I can see that he gets it intuitively by his actions. He’s
also joined the sparring-specific classes, which he loves. Lastly, my wife, who
trains with me on-and-off depending if our schedules allow us to workout and we
can find a place to train, is also a blue belt. For me, while it’s not quite
fulfilling my Taekwondo goal and dream (having my own dojang (training hall)
with my son training under me and getting his black belt from me and with my
wife taking classes and getting her black belt also), my son getting his blue
belt means, at some point in our lives, that we’ve all been Taekwondo blue
belts and there is something in Taekwondo that we all have in common (other,
obviously, than the martial art itself).
10. My
best moment of 2014, which I’d kept close to my heart until now, was at my
son’s kindergarten Reading Celebration. At the event, which took place in his
classroom on a Tuesday morning in June, saw each student read something he or
she had written. Earlier in the school year, I’d gone to my son’s school and
spoke at an assembly about literacy and creating characters. It was my first
speaking engagement as a writer. Well, at The Reading Celebration, after
hearing his classmates read reports they done in class about butterflies and
sharks, I expected to hear my son read about he’d done in class on similar
subjects. What he did, though, couldn’t have been a bigger surprise and nothing
could’ve warmed my heart any more than his story. He’d written and read a story
about how I came to his school and spoke, about how I write books and how he
loves me. I’m getting teary-eyed typing this but not because my son loves me or
wrote about me. Rather, for the same reasons I got teary-eyed on the day, his
story made me realise he knows who I am and what’s important to me. He’s been
to the school where I teach Health and Physical Education. He’s watched me
coach volleyball. He’s seen me play squash, run and practice Taekwondo. But he
rarely sees me write. It’s something I usually do when he’s sleeping. Writing
also isn’t like running or doing Taekwondo that someone can see happening and
get excited by the action. Honestly, watching someone write is boring. So for
him, at age six, to get what I do and to know what I am/want to be touched my
heart more than anything has ever touched my heart in my forty-five years of
being on this planet. My son gets me and loves me and, at the end of it all,
there’s nothing better than that.
So,
that was my year. I hope you had some great moments too – great by your
standards and no one else’s – and I hope we all have even greater ones in 2015.
Happy New Year!
