It’s been another 365 days and we’ve made it around the sun once more. For myself, 2014 was an interesting, fast-paced, and opportunistic year.
I started 2014 in a bit of a slump. I returned from vacationing in California with my best friend to the horrid polar vortex, and was about to start the last semester of my post-grad diploma in marketing. My course load felt light, so I decided to seek out an internship or thought about creating a position and pitching myself to an organization. As I was getting ready to pitch myself to an organization, eSports Canada, another opportunity came along. MMA re-tweeted that Team Acer was looking for writers, so I applied with my portfolio and ended up being 8/50 selected that got the gig. One of the first articles I wrote was BlinG Ring and my most favourite piece so far has been the Rapid Fire Interviews back at IEM Toronto.
2014 also proved to be a daring year of reaching new heights – literally. My best friend is an aerialist, who danced her whole life, and transitioned to circus + aerial silks five years ago. She took me on in January and trained me until November, when she left for a 5-month performing contract on a cruise in Brazil! I am so proud of her! With her help, I have come quite far in my training and have enjoyed every minute of it - I am still doing it in present day. For the school, I even created Twitter and Instagram accounts to help increase their online presence for the promotion of the school's year end performance.
I graduated in April 2014 from my marketing diploma and employment found me 9 days after graduation. I was in the middle of interviewing for a marketing and design position with another employer, when my current boss found me on Twitter. When used properly, Twitter can be a powerful tool (I've obtained three jobs through Twitter). I currently work in real estate, and undertake a series of roles from marketing, designing, internal and external communications, social media, photography, being a whole IT department for silly mac users (lol), and more. My all-encompassing role is exciting at times, but can also be stressful. However, I take each day as it comes and try my best to make each day count.
I also currently work as a Communications Officer for Spectrum, which is an initiative at the University I attended; to encourage entrepreneurship with currently enrolled students. This role has been interesting and has further opened my eyes to entrepreneurship. We even had Dragon Den’s Bruce Croxon and Kevin Cochran as keynote speakers for our event “Marauders Den”, which was pretty cool. Also, my team members, Cass and Justin, are pretty awesome people to work with.
In the summer, I began a design diploma, took on sports photography with an agency, as well as freelance roles in consulting, photography, social media, digital design and writing. I spent the summer playing women’s league soccer, hiking, hanging with friends, visiting beaches, playing video games, volunteering, attending concerts (Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, Spoon, The Black Keys/Cage the Elephant, and LIGHTS), seeing family and finding inspiration to fuel my creativity. I took on personal photography and video projects, scrapbooked, made jewellery, hair bows, bowties, pocket squares, painted and more.
In August, I attended Intel Extreme Masters: Toronto as press for Team Acer. This was my second offline event – I previously attended NASL WCS S3 Finals in November 2013, and you can see me as a baneling here. The four-day event was a lot of fun – from the games, to creating content and meeting awesome people.
In November, I flew out to California for BlizzCon. I attended the WCS global finals on opening weekend with Skye and it was a lot of fun. Skye is also a writer for Team Acer, and is a very lovely, charming, and genuine person. She took me all over SoCal, from visiting beaches to shopping, and made my trip very enjoyable. BlizzCon was also an amazing experience, and I got to meet a lot of great people – including one of my WoW friends from ~2006. The venue was super cool for StarCraft II - it took place in an arena, and the stage itself was pretty wicked. You could feel the energy roaring through the audience over the two days, and I’m thankful to have been present at this event.
When Life gives you lemons...
In the fall, I wandered the streets of Toronto, taking in "art" during Nuit Blanche, The Legend of Korra wrapped up </3, I threw axe’s at BATL, and went to TorCraft (a Toronto-based StarCraft event series held by ESChamp). Throughout the year, I made new friends, lost old friends and strengthened the bond with others. 2014 was a roller coaster of a year, and proved that hard work, determination and being stubborn (in a good way) will help you achieve goals and get you where you want to be. I look forward to 2015, and what this year will bring.
I leave you with some of my favourite videos I look to when I'm lacking inspiration, or need a reminder that I should be doing more awesome things. ^^