As 2017 comes to a close, I have to say I won't miss it.  I had high hopes for this year, not the least of which would be that it was better than the previous one, but sadly, this fell short, despite everything that I did manage to accomplish.  It's been a hard year, both financially and emotionally, and the past 365 days have left their mark.
Anyone following my writing, my blog, or other social media pages, will know that I haven't written anything new since publishing my first novel, Highway Hypnosis.  In the course of the last year, I switched jobs, going from a technician position to a manager of a retail store (not my particular skill set, but necessary to keep food on the table and a roof over my head), had to deal with my step-father becoming verbally abusive to my three year old daughter (which would have resulted in a severe ass-kicking had it been anyone else or under any other circumstances), and found a new place to live and subsequent moving activity.  I've been busy rebuilding my art website while this was going on, a slow process now that I spend over 60 hours a week in a soul-killing position, spending as much time as I can with my lovely daughter, Savannah, and attempting to keep my marriage alive.
Some of these tasks I've managed to accomplish with ease; some have been hard-won, and others are still to be determined.  The past year has been particularly hard on me emotionally, as events from past years have snowballed to yeti proportions, and I've been doing my utmost to deal with those events with as much calm and dexterity as I can muster.  This has not been anywhere near as successful as I would have liked - my time away from actively pursuing my martial arts has eroded the careful discipline such continued practice brings, and this has caused me to fall below my own standards of behavior on more than one occasion (and with those, their own share of regret).
So, in short, not a particularly satisfying year.  Any occasion where I spend more time tearing down and moving, rather than building toward the present and the future, is wasted time, in my opinion, and I hate wasting time.
I'd like to say that I have hope for 2018, but were I to ask the Magic 8-Ball about the promise of the coming year, the results would likely be "prospects do not look good".  Why?  For one, I don't have time to write much these days, and have been fairly depressed on those few occasions where I did.  I have become pretty much what I despise in terms of my job, and am living in uncertain times when it comes to almost every aspect of my life.  I haven't marketed either my novella or my novel, and have no idea when I'll be able to start writing again.  I need to find a way to move closer to the life I've wanted all these years, not farther away, and definitely do not need to tear down my life and start over yet again.  No, I have to make some fundamental changes for the better in the year to come, and have some persistant problems resolve themselves before I declare any hope for the days to come.  Universe - the ball is in your court.

Until next time -

~Namaste