2017 Year-in-Review

Note: This post is AI-generated based on my twitter archive.

Well, looking at the 2017 Tweet Archive, one thing is immediately clear: my time on Twitter fell off a cliff! Compared to the hundreds of updates in my earlier archives, my 2017 output consisted of a grand total of seven tweets. I guess as the kids get older and life gets busier, shouting into the social media void takes a backseat. However, the few times I did log on, it was almost exclusively to stress over Pittsburgh sports and share a very proud parenting moment.

Here is the (very brief) 2017 year in review.

Sports: Agonizing Over the Penguins: If you only looked at my 2017 timeline, you would assume I was a full-time sports commentator. I spent the first half of the year agonizing over the Pittsburgh Penguins’ playoff run. In May, I was losing my mind over Evgeni Malkin’s “laziness with his stick” but quickly bounced back to praise the team for an “unbelievable shift” against the Ottawa Senators. By June, during the Stanley Cup Finals against the Nashville Predators, my anxiety was peaking. I took to Twitter to complain that our defensemen were making mistakes on “every single defensive zone possession” and that Phil Kessel suddenly couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. During a tense moment in the Finals, I was even pleading with the referees through my TV screen: “They can’t call this back right? Right? #PENSvsPREDS”.

On the football front, I was still proudly repping the black and gold, kicking off the year by tweeting out a classic “#HereWeGo from Nova Scotia @steelers”.

Family: A Touching Tribute: My undisputed “Tweet of the Year” actually bridged my love for the Steelers and my pride as a dad. When Steelers linebacker Ryan Shazier suffered his terrifying injury in December, my son Andrew — now growing into quite the young man — was really affected by it. Andrew sat down, drew a picture of Ryan, and insisted that we hang it up on our fridge until he got better. I tweeted the picture out to Ryan, wishing him well. It was an incredibly touching moment and a great reminder of how big Andrew’s heart is.

Work and Technology Radio Silence: Interestingly, my archive is completely empty when it comes to technology and work for the year 2017. Given that I was over a year into my demanding new role as the Director of Digital Innovation & Technology at the Nova Scotia Community College, I’m guessing my hands were simply too full with actual work to be tweeting about my homelab or gadgets!

2017 may not have been my most prolific year on social media, but sometimes a quiet digital footprint just means a busy, fulfilling life in the real world.