Wow, seems like just a couple posts ago I was saying Peace Out, 2016.

Oh. I was.

So 2017 was not a very productive year for the ol’ blog. Let’s see. There was one complaining about the Transformers movie, one telling Star Wars fans not to complain about The Last Jedi, and one about Christmas episodes of The Office.

How topical, right? Finger on the pulse, I tell ya.

Well, let’s dissect the ‘look ahead’ portion my 2016 post, shall we? Maybe I fulfilled some destinies there:

I want to write more, create more.

Actually, nailed that one. Knew this was a good idea!

Get away from Netflix, and get back to board game design.

Got closer to Netflix (Thanks, Stranger Things) and I think I went all of 2017 without playing a significant board game, let alone developed one.

I miss hosting a podcast.

My cousin and I actually recorded an episode of 2 Dudes!!! The final one. Hmm— 

Next!

Blog more.

Salt in the wound.

Experience more.

Debatable.

Eat less sweets (starting Tuesday—I’m not an animal).

Oh! So this one, I actually….probably ate more thanks to my sedentary office job. The doughnut and bagel access was at an all-time high and everyone gets a free cake on their birthday. Ouch.

Okay, so 2017 was a tough one. For everybody, I suppose. Seemed like  a bad time to muster my voice to say something about the state of the world. Especially for me, a guy who notoriously steers clear of being overly political, opinionated, etc. Promoting my writing career or my growing Transformers collection just didn’t seem appropriate for 2K17.

But I did focus on my writing. A lot. In fact, I’m in the final stretch of a novel I quietly began last April. It was a very different experience for me, in a lot of ways actually. For one, I kept quiet about it. Mentioned it to only a handful of people, told nobody the title. That’s weird for me. The Classic Mikel move is to think up a story idea, write 3 pages, send it to everyone, then give up on it. But this time I’m keeping it close to the vest, I’m writing it without chapter breaks in mind, and it’s a story that is very un-Mikel. Which is to say it’s not about a 18- to 25-year-old white male struggling to become a writer and/or dealing with burgeoning wizard powers. I’ve worked on this project very diligently, nearly every weekend, since I began and I’m finally glimpsing that light at the end of the tunnel.

A lot of my free time went into my WIP, and my weekdays were mostly consumed by my desk job (and a very long commute). But that ends today. Maybe I’m in a reflective mood because it’s the last day of the job I started around the same time as I started the book. Much like COM going out of print, this is a good thing. I’ve been ready to part ways with this contract for awhile, and I look forward to finding something I’m more passionate about to pay the bills. Should I have saved up more? Yes, of course, but what else is new?

For it being such a sucky—can we just say Trumpy now?—year, it wasn’t all that bad. My TF collection grew exponentially. I was able to go the Star Wars Celebration convention in Florida with my besties. A phenomenal trip, exceeded what I thought a vacation could be. The only downside of it was that my Star Wars enthusiasm really didn’t kick in until Last Jedi hit theaters. Think of how much more money I could’ve spent on souvenirs!!! Instead, I pretty much just got this guy:

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But there is no light without the dark—learned that from Star Wars too—and this year hasn’t been immune. While last year’s major bummer was mostly political, this year things got a bit more personal, in the form of my father having a stroke. I can’t say it’s been a burden on me, as he’s very self-sufficient and my awesome aunts do a lot of the heavy lifting (sometimes literally), but there’s definitely been sorrow in my heart since. That ‘everything’s going to be okay’ bubble got popped and it took me a long time to regroup, especially creatively. I’m still not 100% from the ordeal, and the anxiety it triggered has been next-level, but I’m alive, my dad’s alive, and we just move forward. Everyday.

Well, that’s 2017 in a nutshell. 2018 will be a true mystery, a true reinvention of myself, forced upon me by, if nothing else, my surprise unemployment. But there’s hope. I have no real deep words of wisdom here. No profundities. Just be good to each other in 2018, see The Last Jedi, and don’t complain about franchises you love.