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Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Xmas Blog #10: Wishes and Resolutions for 2014

2014 is round the corner. Time for those New Year Resolutions.

It looks like there will be two outside professional gigs down in the states in 2014. That's exciting. A year from now I could very well be far, far away from both Montreal and Iowa. It looks like this summer will be a summer for an actual family vacation.

Last summer "off" from opera wasn't really off. I played a bunch of performances of La Voix Humaine for the fabulous OperaFive (go Rachel and Aria!) in the Ottawa Fringe Festival. We earned the critics choice award for best of Fringe and I received accolades in the press like "Patrick Hansen was perfect." (How does one put that in their bio?!) And, if you've been reading my blogs this year, the second half of the summer was spent recovering from a hernia repair surgery.

I'd like an ACTUAL vacation. An actual summer off.  We are thinking of spending a bunch of it in Iowa, helping my wife's parents organize their house. We'd also like to see other parts of America, which is very doable on the road between Montreal and Iowa. As Americans, we want our kids to know the great country that is the United States and one of the best ways is to slowly drive through it -- off the interstates -- and literally stop and smell the roses. Maybe a few days in Chicago as well. The best city in the U.S.!

Additionally, 2014 is the last year of my teaching at McGill full time. I'm taking two "half" sabbaticals during the winters of 2015 and 2016. Lots of projects, but mostly those sabbaticals are about the world premiere opera I'm collaborating on. I'll have to make sure everything is as planned as possible so I can depart.  Next year's Opera McGill season gets announced in a forthcoming blog, FYI.

So my New Year Resolutions:

1) Meditate more regularly and increase my sitting time
2) Be more of a presence in my boys' lives
3) Do less. Eat less. Drink less. Worry less. Less is More.
4) Turn 50 with grace and good health.
5) Beard On! (albeit, perhaps in a more trimmed fashion...........)

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