We made it.

Like many others, our family lives according to the rhythms of the school year. I have two teenage kids and my wife is a teacher. And for about two weeks, I have been saying, ad nauseam, that "we're in the home stretch!"

Everyone is spent.

It has me thinking back to a year ago at this time, when I was on sabbatical. At that time I was done, in a major way, and needed to make a clean break of some sort.

I was initially going to shut down The Sprawl. But people close to me talked me down and encouraged me to take a sabbatical instead—keeping The Sprawl going, but dormant and completely silent for the summer.

And so, last summer, I said no to any and all requests. More specifically, my email auto-reply said no.

Can you cover this or that story? Can you be part of this project? Can you complete this survey? Can you give more information on this article?

No, no and no. No!

It was lovely. The summer of no.

But then I got a different sort of request.

It came about because a friend of mine, Johanna Schwartz, who runs Congress Coffee, had found something at an estate sale last July. She did not tell me what it was, only that it was Stampede-related. Come by and pick it up, she said.

So I did, and there it was: a snazzy western Calgary Herald shirt. A real beauty!

I posted a photo of my new acquisition on Facebook, thinking nothing of it. A few days later, I got an email from longtime Calgary Herald columnist Catherine Ford, who I'd interviewed when doing my Sprawlcast on the newspaper's long demise.

"My niece’s husband says you might want my 60-year collection of media mugs," wrote Ford, who has been writing for the newspaper since the 1960s. "All you have to do is pick it up."

No, no, n—sorry, what?! HECK YES, I'll be right over!

Now, before I proceed with the story, I should explain something. Our mug shelf at home is always overflowing. There is always, somehow, one too many mugs—enough that the cupboard doesn't quite close. We get rid of mugs here and there but somehow we always have one too many.

If there is one thing we don't need, it's more mugs.

But, as I saw it, I had no choice. Media mugs that Catherine Ford herself had collected over decades? There was no possible way of saying no. There was only one answer: yes.

Thus began mugapalooza. Or perhaps the mugocalypse, depending on your perspective.

Surveying the scene in my kitchen before my wife got home, I knew I had to develop an explanation for this avalanche of mugs, and quickly. So I devised a plan where I would give most of these away. I would find people who want them. And I would do it within 48 hours.

Don't worry, I said. All of these will be taken care of! I will find homes for all but a few!

Now came the fun part: matching mugs with people who would appreciate them. I posted about my plight on Facebook ("WHAT HAVE I DONE"), letting people know various mugs were up for grabs.

There were six boxes of mugs to go through—for various newspapers across Canada and for radio and TV programs. There were a ton of CBC mugs, including for specific local shows: The Eyeopener, The Homestretch, Daybreak Alberta.

The homes for these particular pieces were obvious. I reached out to the host of each CBC program, offering them the mug(s) for their shows from Ford's collection.

All of them were jazzed, and now had a little piece of CBC history.

I also heard from a surprising number of CBC staff and former staff who lamented that they had worked for the Mothercorp for however many years, and never once been bestowed with a mug. Hey CBC, give your staff a damn coffee mug once in a while, eh?!

Other mugs went to reporters and former reporters of the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, Medicine Hat News and so on.

For the rest, I put out an open call on Facebook.

I realized, as I was drowning in mugs—hey, I'm really enjoying this.

It reminded me of what I loved about The Sprawl in the first place—pop-up projects that somehow connected people. There was joy in it. And it made me realize that it was possible to find my way back to this joy again.

Maybe keeping The Sprawl going did not have to be a grinding, life-sucking misery. Maybe it could be fun again.

It needed to be.

Today, a bunch of Catherine Ford’s old mugs now live happily at Congress Coffee, pictured below. Some went to the Alexandra Writers’ Centre. And a bunch more have been scattered to the good winds, in various kitchens and cupboards.

Now, lest you think my motivation was altruistic in the Great Calgary Media Mug Extravaganza, let me assure you it was not.

I kept the choicest pieces for myself. The mugs that were, in my estimation, the very best of the bunch.

They are mine.

I learned a lot last summer. You have to step away from the fray when you need to. No one will do it for you.

And when the spark of life is gone, you can't force it back. All you can do is attend to what's there. And sometimes the spark returns in the most surprising of ways—such as, of all things, a deluge of mugs.

Jeremy Klaszus is founder and editor of The Sprawl.