Reasons I liked 2017:
Rehabbed elephants
Thai sunsets
Dragon boats
Street food
Singapore in the rain
Toronto
Colorado hikes
Ethiopian dancing (yo yo yo yo yo!)
Storms in Agadez (and late night drinks in Niamey)
The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque
Lagoon pools in Bahrain
Canyoning by the Dead Sea
Crowdsurfing at anime cons
Diving the reefs off Roatan’s West Bay
24K, snowy hikes through the backcountry in Banff
The Aria
The Manchester bees (and Nando’s!)
Stripping down and leaping into a frozen Atlantic off the Azores
Liters of beer in Munich
Unscheduled overnights in Denmark (ha!)
Rain-wet Romanian cemeteries
Waterfalls in Cyprus
The harbor in Crete
Wine in Montepulciano
Running through Rome
Leaping off the top of Mt. Etna
Libernia Restaurant in Kosovo
Watching the Astros win the World Series at 4am on a laptop in Pristina
Wild parakeets in Kensington Gardens
The Burj Khalifa
Chopper rides through Afghanistan
Playing in white sand dunes
There’s all of the above plus I was in a movie and released a comedy special. I wrecked dirt bikes, hiked new trails, spent days on rivers in tubes and canoes, I got a new niece AND a new Star Wars movie. I could give you the reasons I hated it, too, but this list looks way cooler and makes me way happier.
Most importantly I got to do it all on my terms and with people I hand-chose to work and hang with. I’m not at the whim of any one booker or agent. I’m not even artistically pigeonholed into just one medium anymore.
Somewhere over the last few years I learned that life is exactly what you make it. Nothing less, nothing more. Most of what happens to us today is the result of actions we took in the past, both good and bad. Instant gratification is a myth. We are just setting up bowling pins to be knocked down later. So start doing cool things for Future You today, will ya?
I’m off to Honduras in the morning to start the next chapter. I hope your 2018 rocks. Yes. Even yours.
