2016 was a rough year for the world. Honestly the world hasn’t looked this bleak in a long time. The election results that went through in the US feel like a slap in the face of everything good, decent and just downright sane in the world, the horrific things going on in Aleppo, global warming reaching new milestones, and the ridiculous number of musicians, actors and artists who have died this year are all enough to make me want to dig a hole in the backyard and lie down to wait for death. Death probably would make me wait for way too long and it’s cold and wet out there, so I won’t do it because I’m a at least moderately more comfortable outside the wet cold hole in the backyard. You might look at the year that we have had as having been a year of loss, a year of death of different sorts be it more tangible as in the case of Carrie Fisher or the hundreds in Aleppo, or more abstract as in the things that some people think that were lost in the US elections. As humans we tend to reflect things through our own experiences and this leaves me in a strange place. You see it could be argued that I wouldn’t be in the university right now had there not been death and loss in my life. It was 2013 when I looked into my little brother’s eyes as he gasped his last breath. Fun just kept going about 6 months later when me and my co-workers found out we were out of a job for reasons completely out of our control. Now that was a shit year for me.

But without what my brother had lost and what I had lost in him I doubt I could have mustered the will to reapply to the university for the umpteenth time and without the loss of my job, strengthening my resolve, I doubt I could have found the time and energy to study enough to pass. I doubt I could be quite so happy about where I am in life, even if it isn’t always perfect. I doubt I could have met the girl I now love. I doubt I could have met all the wonderful friends that I have and love. I doubt I could find myself inspired by literature in quite the same way. I doubt I could be writing this. I doubt I could be the I that I am in so many ways.

What am I trying to say? Well I guess someone could say that “everything happens for a reason”, but I’d like to think that things happen and we find the reason in them and make it work for us. Sometimes it works out sometimes it doesn’t. For me it worked and I’d like to think that it can work for the world too. One shit year reshaped my future. One shit year. So here’s looking at 2016 I won’t miss you, but I will remember you.