I'll be content, but not necessarily satisfied, if 2018 shakes out similar to 2017—I snapped a number of lengthy activity droughts in '17 and was able to actually spend face-to-face time with a number of valued friends whose schedules hadn't linked up with mine of late.

 

Most importantly, I anxiously await 2018 because that's when I'll see my daughter again. Josie has been thousands of miles away in Samoa since mid-December, and without her dragging me out of bed at 6am to tear open gifts as is our Holiday norm...Christmas 2017 simply didn't register. 
In fact, after she left, I really lost the desire to do much of anything in my spare time except sit around and mope. Great way to stay in shape, right?

Speaking of sitting around and moping, after I broke my rib totaling a once-indestructible Honda Accord in November, I was pretty much sedentary for the next month—you don't think you need your ribs to run, but you do. This, of course, affected my waistline, a waistline already impacted by my medications.

Given the events of early 2017, discontinuing meds is only an option if I want another trip to the loony bin—which I don't. (Even though it had a full gym and hot nurses. But I'm not here to talk about the past.)

The challenge for 2018: finding some balance for my physical and mental health. I really need to step up the exercise, and I'll start by allowing myself to only watch playoff football if riding the stationery bike simultaneously. A side benefit to that: any and all of Joe Buck's smug commentary will be drowned out by the bike (and, after three miles, my girlish cries of agony.)

In 2018, I hope to check off (at least) the following movies from my unseen list:

⦁    Terminator 1 and 2
⦁    Scarface
⦁    The Blair Witch Project
⦁    A Few Good Men
⦁    many more

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(And when Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Only The Brave hit DVD/Blu-Ray, I'm all over those, too. But screw the idea of watching them in the theaters. I forgot: other people are there.)

Now we'll transition from the To-Do In 2018 list to the To-Don't-Do In 2018 list. Or at the very least, the To-Do-A-Lot-Less list. I seriously overdid it on energy drinks this summer and while I closed the year having cut my intake in half, and making 80% of that intake sugarless, I HAVE to do better in 2018.

Once a month is certainly possible. I've cut those things out of my life before and I'm going to do it again, if for no other reason than to spare my damn wallet! 

For much of 2017, I allowed myself to be distracted from my website theskillzreport.com all too easily by the newly-discovered AskReddit.com. You learn a lot and you laugh a lot on that website...but at the cost of being wholly unproductive. If it wasn't for Reddit, I wouldn't be 10 days behind on site updates. Sorry to all you TSR fans out there...please exercise patience.

Finally, in 2018, I will definitely take better care of our goldfish. One of our originals died in March on my 37th birthday; we'd had Oscar since June 2012. The other three plus our algae eater were all gone within the next four weeks—all likely done in by swimming in contaminated water I'd failed to clean at proper intervals. 

We now have Floppy, Kiwi, Mavis and Twilight the algae eater, and they will receive nothing short of immaculate care going forward...the little greedy idiots deserve nothing less.

We're now approaching the final stop on the 2017 train. Thanks for being along for the ride with me one more year, and once you hit the highway be sure to merge carefully as you take the on-ramp onto what I hope is a VERY prosperous and memorable 2018.