I surf on circumstance. With a spraying of ironic spume from time to time, just for good measure.

Example: I sold my business a few months ago. Circumstance – my former office was to become the final piece of the jig saw puzzle for my tenant, Shutterstock. Metastasizing from a 1,500 square foot start up through being acquired by a US Public Company (everybody’s start up dream), I was aware in 2015 that by November 30, 2017, Antrev’s offices would be demo’d and absorbed lock, stock, and corridor, into the Shutterstock behemoth. So, here’s the irony – starting out in property management in a quasi-family biz back in 1982, the first demising wall that I put up, changing St-Laurent Boulevard from Schmattaville to the Plateau, became the last wall that was demolished under my aegis.

It was too much of a pain to consider upheavaling myself and my office, spending a bunch of money to do so. I was losing interest and patience in dealing with individuals from whom I was feeling more remote daily. And not too far from Paul’s magic number to wonder if this was not the time. Realizing that I would likely end up paying market rent for the first time in my life was the clincher.

So started a new aspect of life. To call what I am doing retirement would be the opposite of fainting with damn praise. More appropriately, I have sold off the major enterprise of my life that has taken the most amount of time over the past 35 years (maybe) and had been a prime source of income. I am now free to devote more time, energy and thought in promoting aspects of life who have snuck into the game plan via routes that I was not clearly aware of. As a result I am spending times such as Victoria Day and more Sundays the past six months than the past six years in the office saying “huh”?

Blessed with good health, stability at home (our definition), an array of cultural, social, political, and economic interests to keep me amused and interested for the foreseeable, I can only thank whatever forces exist that have allowed me the opportunity to express myself through these keys. Not since Francis Scott.