It's been a rough year for myself and my family.

My dad had to get an operation to fight a low grade version of cancer. To make a long, depressing story short, the operation didn't go quite right and he had to undergo an emergency operation. He could have easily died. After a month in the hospital, he finally got barely good enough to get home. That was back in June/July. I would say around October my dad truly showed very positive signs of recovery. He is much more independent now. There are still a couple of hurdles he will need to clear, but it seems that my dad might be okay.

Friends of mine got divorced. That's also a long story and it wouldn't be right to air other peoples dirty laundry. I'll just leave it as that the situation was obviously tremendously stressful for all involved.

Childhood friend of mine got killed by someone that hit and ran him over. I haven't physically seen him in years, but we did chat through social media. I was lucky enough to share some pictures with him and remind him of all the awesome stuff we did together as kids. I'm still processing this one as this happened fairly recently.

In general my emotions have been a mess because of this year. But...

I am trying to get better. Despite the holiday season, I have finally been making a true effort to lose weight. So far I am closing in on 20lbs lost. I have lost a lot of weight before, so I have experience doing it. Though last time I was 19/20 as opposed to be being in the dead center of my 30s, but it looks like the changes I have made to my diet are working.

I also got off my ass and cleaned my condo (mostly). My girlfriend and I are lazy housekeepers and we just have too much stuff. During my time off around Thanksgiving, I literally woke up upset about me leaving a wrapper on my coffee table. For whatever reason that started a vicious cleaning frenzy. My bedroom looks like crap still because, again, we have too much stuff, but all other areas look the best they have been since I moved in, and I am keeping it up (this is nothing short of a miracle for me). I mean, when I have people over we aren't going to hang in my bedroom anyway, so it feels nice that all areas people will be at least look someone passable at worst.

So I am trying hard to unsmurf myself. I generally feel great because I just came off a great Christmas yesterday. I am hoping that 2018 will be a better year. Even if not, I am determined to get both my emotional state and my physical state under control. I don't have to be a perfectly chiseled muscle man while never being emotionally compromised, but just getting better helps tremendously. As far as the weight thing goes, I forgot how much better you feel when your body suddenly realizes it doesn't have to manage as much weight as it used to, as well as generally having more energy and not feeling like a beached whale that lit itself on fire as a protest.

Oh trout my break is over.