It’s that time of year, when I look over the past twelve months, look ahead to the twelve to come, and spill the beans on what you can look forward to in the coming season.

The short answer to that last bit is, basically… less of me.

Regular readers may have noticed Jeremy posting more of late, and me posting less. No, I’m not getting lazy. Rather, my source of income, freelance writing, which has allowed me to post to the blog so frequently over the past four years, has shifted gears of late.

With the Canadian dollar reaching par with the US dollar, it’s just not as profitable as it used to be to write for US media outlets from the comfort and safety of the Great White North, so I sold my business, Unreel Media, to an American owner, and reentered the work force.

The first place I applied for work (in a decade!) was the Vancouver Sun, because though the giant media conglomerates that control the press in this part of the world absolutely give me The Fear (as my old pal Hunter S. Thompson might have phrased it), if you’re going to drink from the media well, it might as well be ‘the well of record’, and the best place to help make change in the world is from inside the machine that helps it spin. 

And, shockingly, they were actually hiring. Even more shockingly, they wanted me aboard. Perhaps most shocking of all, considering that I’ve been freelancing for the better part of a decade, I quite liked the idea of a cubicle and a career path in a place that has such potential to make positive change in the world. 

So it’s now official – I’m a Vancouver Sun employee (of sorts). I’ve joined the working class. I’m union. When you go to the Sun website, chances are good that I’m the one pulling the strings behind the curtain (seldom has my nickname been so apropos). On certain days, anyway.

So no more freelancing from me (other than the occasional Scout.com piece). No more big decisions such as, "Do I sleep ’til 10am or 11am?" or "Should I bother changing out of my sweats today or should I leave that until Friday?" No more afternoons spent ‘researching’ at the beach. I’m a ‘workaday joe’. I’m Johnny Lunchpail. I’m a taxpayer.

Sadly, that means I’m no longer able to attend every single freaking ball-game in an NWL season. I guess four years of almost continual baseball attendance is about twice the number of full-seasons that should rightly be assigned to any individual over the course of his entire life, so I can’t be too sad about having to grow up at the age of 38.

Plus, since my shift to actual employment comes at the same time as the C’s have announced they’ll be webcasting home games, I’m sure I can sneak a look at things from the camera’s perspective every other inning or so, even if I’m technically on the job at the time.

And, Jeremy is a blog-posting machine who more than picks up my slack when it comes to dishing the inside dirt (seriously, J, what’s the freaking mascot’s name?), so you can expect, collectively at least, the same number of post-game reports and inside scoops as years previous – if not more.

But yeah, I’ll personally be posting less this year. And going to less games. And playing less, in my spare time. And with a three-month-old joining the two-year-old in my household, what spare time I have will be mostly filled with wiping up spit-up and combating temper tantrums.

Fear not, however; the blog will live on. I’ll be watching things closely, and I’ll be assigning nicknames to players as they emerge, such being the tradition that we’ve built on Notes From The Nat. I’ll be keeping my eye out for more Jeremy’s out there, if such a thing can even exist, and I’ll also be utilizing the database of info at The Sun to bring you guys some seriously interesting retrospective stuff – both on this blog, and on the newspaper’s site.

Speaking of which, I’ve got something really cool lined up for the Sun site for the week before the season begins, so keep an eye out for it. With Lyndon Little covering every home game for the paper, and little ol’ me making sure that the C’s get coverage on the electronic side, there should be something for everyone.

So, in short, to paraphrase the great John Cleese… I’m not dead. I’m just resting my eyes.

Oh, one last thing – whoever has been booking airfares using our WestJet link off to the left… thanks. It’s appreciated, and it’ll help us grow as a site in ways you’ll enjoy.