(Sunday Paper, Year III, Issue 50)

A couple of years ago, when I brought back the Sunday Paper in this new format, I mentioned that at the old Sunday Paper I liked to close out the year with a recap of the top stories.

Those stories, of course, were all centered around sports.

And I said with this one I wanted to close out the year with something different, and the Q and A (coming next week!) was born.

I haven’t felt it was really necessary to do a ‘top stories’ or any such thing…until now.

I guess because 2018 was a really eventful and pretty great year for me personally.

So next week we’ll do the Q and A, the week after we’ll check in on the yearly goals….and this week we’re going to re-live a little bit what’s been a pretty great year.

I won’t go week by week through the old Sunday Papers…but I think we’ll cover maybe monthish-by-monthish:

January was a slow start to the new year. There’s nothing good to link to from the Sunday Paper, but maybe now I’ll reveal this to you, which I didn’t tell anyone until this past week, actually: When Kathy was away in mid-January last year I fell down the stairs at home. Not a huge fall - like five steps - but I really hurt my toe. It was so bad that it was notable in like the spring or summer when it was finally back to normal and I was able to bend it again. It’s fine now but I think about it often when I’m on stairs…and how bad that could have been when Kathy was away. Anyway. Not sure why I felt compelled to tell you that now. I guess I just needed to spice up January, because it didn’t have a whole lot going on and the next month was a good one.

February/March

February started out gangbusters - I had this essay published in the Boston Globe…and then I wrote this Sunday Paper giving a little bit of the back story to that essay. I haven’t really submitted anything since then - one or two essays to various places - but this was my last big acceptance. It’s a great feeling when it happens. (Side note: I don’t think the Globe does these ‘My First Home’ essays anymore…and I think mine might have been one of the last ones.) February also ended gangbusters with my trip to Greensboro to perform in the North Carolina Comedy Festival.

March was kind of slow, though I did play the role of proud brother and proud dad, all in the same week.

April/May

One event in April kind of got me thinking about this post…something happened this week that made me wonder if I should update the Sunday Paper readers and whether there were other events that needed updating…and then I decided to just do the year in review. The event that happened this week is that my doctor left the medical practice I go to. So I need to find a new doctor. Loyal readers will also remember that I liked my doctor, who I had seen twice - most recently in April. And his parting words to me at that visit were somewhat ominous regarding my next visit. And now I’ll have to have that encounter with a complete stranger. In May I addressed the new diet I was trying out after seeing my (sigh, former) doctor. And I announced Framingham Comedy Weekend, which has led to Comedy Night at Exhibit ‘A’, which debuts January 12th and I’ll be telling you more about soon.

June/July/August

The end of May (with one fashion guest post in late April) ushered in guest post season - my friend and former co-teacher, my kids, Kathy, my brother and sister, my friend Danielle, and her dog Zoey. And that ushered in the summer, which was a great one. There was the fun alphabetical recap of the trip to North Carolina, Framingham Comedy Weekend itself - and a general sense that it was THE GREATEST SUMMER OF OUR LIVES! July, of course, featured my 40th birthday, and the Facebook page (give it a Like and catch up on what you’ve been missing!) featured the 40-day countdown listing 40 of my favorite things. That was definitely a highlight of my year.

September/October

In September there was one last 2018 guest post, from writer friend Gina Sampaio, then a bit of a dry spell with way too much time spent on my favorite gray shirt. We closed out October with a fun experiment that bears repeating - Sunday Paper Live! I really enjoyed that and will do it again. It just means I have to have an eventful day…which is never a guarantee. Especially on a Sunday.

November/December

And here we are at the end of the year…I’m excited to take on the Q and A questions in next week’s post - that’s always a fun one to write, and then it’s fun to re-visit my goals for the year and look ahead in anticipation of New Year’s in the last post of the year. It was a good year and I believe I’ve met the goals I set for myself. I’ve been thinking about what bar I want to reach in 2019.

If you haven’t been keeping tabs on the elf videos, there are now 15 of them up on the Facebook page - you have some catching up to do. Today’s will be posted later today - it’s one of our favorites. (My daughter’s been doing most of the recording and I love how you can hear her laughing in it because she didn’t know what I was going to do. What can I say? I like performing for an audience.) And I’ll definitely be posting more about Exhibit ‘A’ now that we’re inside a month until that show. I hope you’ll consider coming out for one of those shows in the new year.

Until then, thanks for reading and following along all year. More good stuff on the way, I promise.