I'm worried this will come off as whiny. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I won't be correcting that -- I would much prefer you think me whiny and conceited than untruthful. So here goes nothing.

I'm way too ambitious for my own good. But I know that at least some of it isn't me. It's a response to the situations I'm part of.

I take on project after project, hour after hour of work, all because I have something to prove. And I do. There are some things in this world truly worth doing, and I like to think that someone, somewhere, is benefiting from the work I'm doing -- as I know I am. But sometimes, it's just not worth it, or I don't have the intrinsic motivation or vision to see that light, that person's joy at the tunnel. So I'm instead turning to work for selfish, avoidant reasons.

My life is fucked up. Not, like, child-in-a-third-world-country-being-eaten-by-flies fucked up; it's first world fucked up. I've gone through some pretty heavy, world-around-me-changing-in-a-bad-way life events this year. And it's hit me pretty bad. And yet I know that some of the people around me, especially my brother, have gone through and are going through worse.

Over the past month, my family has slowly been coming apart at the seams. While there was always tension between all of the "clans", waxing and waning with each passing day, we stood together, united. Sitting down every Friday, the 13 of us (sometimes more, sometimes less) around the table had our own weekly Jewish Last Supper, content in the knowledge that it was not going to be the last. Not this week, not next week, not the week after next. Until, one day, it was. And I wasn't there to see it.

My grandfather passed away last month. Not even, actually. We're now a day shy of the three-week point. And, while I didn't visit him enough (could anyone visit anyone they love enough?), his presence, lessons, and kindheartedness have virtually disappeared from my life. There is one less smile that I can bring to this world. One less smile that can be brought out in me. And his was probably my favourite smile to create, or to receive, in the world.

Now, these situations would be upsetting, but not overly so, if I had the friends I could rely on last year. But through some shameful twists of fate -- some of which my fault, some of which theirs, and some which couldn't have been prevented, even if we tried -- three of my closest friends have vacated my life.

My friendships with Ben and Cristina were strained by the fact that we lived together, incompatibly so, for a year. Could I have saved us by finding someone to take over my room and moving out? Maybe. I'll never know. Part of me wishes that I hadn't been so stubborn in my defenses that I was contributing my fair share to the upkeep of our apartment, that I had had the sense to organize my bed and mattress and closet sooner, before I had to spend 2 weeks living on our futon. Part of me knows and resents that they made unfair assumptions about my habits, as I was often out of sight and out of mind. But, deep down, I know that neither position is right, as neither of them could have salvaged the friendships I once thought would last forever.

My friendship with Justin... that's still a mystery to me. I know that I told Salty some things that offended him, but until that point, there was hardly anything that didn't pass between the three of us unsaid. He had been getting testy with me for a month or more before, and I felt that he was trying to find a confrontation that our friends would accept as a "dealbreaker". Well, he found one. And now I've lost my best friend, closest companion, and partner in crime for 5 years to what appears to me as short-sighted greed, loyalty to too few, and a life he knows he can't sustain on his own. While I feel that we had a symbiotic friendship, my greatest fear is that he is becoming a parasite.

While the above could simply be a simple torrential shitstorm, one last thing turns it into a veritable excrement monsoon: my brother and I don't exist as brothers anymore. I'm sure there are things I do or say that bother him, but he doesn't respond consistently (if he responds at all) when I try to reach out to him. And all I get, to my face and behind my back, are biting insults. I know he's suffered through way worse than what I've described this past year, but there's only so much self-abuse I can handle. Each time I try to reach out to him, he spits venom back at me, and I'm almost out of antidote.

In the face of all of this, what is there to do but pursue bigger and better things? What can elevate me more than a hugely successful project, or collaboration?

There is only one way that I see out of this situation, and it's not actually a way out. Like Richler's Duddy Kravitz, the deliberate pursuit of greatness is the redemption I seek, but not the solution I need.

While I can hope for, look for, and try out solutions, this year has proven to me that I may never find the right one, and that newer problems quickly arise to compound the old. Instead, I rigorously apply myself to myself, knowing that somehow, someday, I'll claw my way out of this mess. I just pray that, unlike Duddy, I never, ever intentionally throw anyone -- let alone a friend -- into the oncoming traffic I'll undoubtedly be hit by soon enough.

I hope you appreciate the candor, Post. Because it's time to get back to work.

--Aidan