Well, here it is, the last week of 2017, so it’s time to kick off my retrospective of the year.  All things considered, this year was pretty decent to me if a bit on the rough side.  I made some pretty significant life changes, and managed to come out the other side in good spirits.

Here are a couple of sweeping generalizations around how 2017 worked out:

Mental Health

The main change I’ve had to make in 2017 is adapting to being single and living by myself.  I don’t mind being single so much as constantly being asked if I’m dating (for me, this part simply sucks).  On the other hand, living alone has been both good and bad for me.  I’ve not really lived alone for more than a month before (yes, I know, that’s weird for someone at my age), and I find that I really like the calm that comes from it.  I know I can relax when I get home without having to socialize my day with another person, and I know that the house is going to be exactly as clean as how I left it.  On the other hand, I find that I miss sharing the day with someone sometimes – the funny one-liner, the epic pun, or something that really makes me think; I’m the only one that has experienced it, and it definitely loses something in the translation.

As I adjusted, I ended up dealing with both extremes – isolation and over-socialization.  Both have helped me figure out where I want to be, but that doesn’t mean I enjoyed it at the time.  I’m glad my friends have been patient with me here; they have helped more than they know.

Physical Health

I made physical checkups more of a priority this year, even if my physical health goals haven’t changed. Really, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing here – eat better?  Work out more?  Do more exercise?  I’m sure all of these things would be better for me, but I’m not sure where I want to be spending my time/effort in this arena.

Work Life

I felt like I was more able to be productive and a functioning supervisor this year than I did last year.  The main contributor to that was actually being fully staffed for most of the year, but I also made a concerted effort to seek out higher-level responsibilities and make Ops better.  I still feel like I could have done better, and I’m looking forward to 2018 as hopefully getting fully back on my feet.

Gaming

Gaming is a pretty broad topic, but I feel like I engaged more with the hobby this year than any other since I moved to the front range.  I ran a couple of reasonably successful role-playing games, helped run a Warmachine/Hordes league for new players, played quite a few board games, and even got in a few video games.  If I break that down a bit…

I’ve been pretty happy with how role-playing has gone this year.  I feel like my savage worlds game went really well I really liked the microscope prelude to build out the history a bit.  After GMing for the same group for a while now, I feel like I have a better handle on the group dynamic as well.  This particular group has its challenges, but I find that the problems I have are less about the group (they are solid role-players) and more about my ability to communicate effectively across the generational gap.

The Warmachine/Hordes league was a ton of fun.  I took the opportunity to pick up a new army, and rather enjoyed collecting, assembling, and painting the Grymkin.  I also learned more about running a league (this being the third league that I’ve run), and feel like I can make the next one even better.

Of the gaming I’ve done this year though, I’m most happy with my board and card game time.  I regularly play games on Friday – sometimes just through lunch, other days, when I’m off, playing through longer games like Kingdom Death: Monster.  In addition to weekly gaming, I’ve managed to get a few game days in as well – this has given me the chance to be a little bit more social and use my gaming table, which is always fun.

For my computer gaming time, I have managed to do less single-player gaming, but I have been keeping up my weekly Saturday gaming with John.  We’ve played quite the breadth of games this year, including a fair bit of tabletop simulator.  Unfortunately, I haven’t really made the time to get through the games I really wanted to play this year – Bastion, Transistor, Grim Dawn, Guild Wars, or Stellaris to name a few.

Reading and Writing

Overall, I’m pretty happy with how much reading I got in this year.  When I look back on the list on the right, it’s pretty neat to see the full list of everything I read there.  I find it pretty funny that this corresponds really to three book series (The DemonWars, Riverworld, and Lensman) and some other scattered books, but, I’ve really enjoyed all of them.  In terms of writing, I can definitely say that I’m okay with how much I got done.  Sure, I didn’t write twice a week every week, but I I feel good about what I did write, so that works for me.