At long last this fucking year is over.

Just fucking end already, 2016.

There are less than 12 hours left in the year, according to what my friend calls the arbitrary meridian that sweeps across the planet. I want to be playing RC Pro-Am on my RetroPie right now, but since I committed to a post a day this month*, wrapping it up with a look back at the year seems like a good use of my time.

Instead of looking back at all the terrible things that happened in 2016, I’m going to focus on the good things that happened this year, because to be honest, 2016 and its election of a fucking Fascist can fuck off and die in a fire.

I successfully rebooted my life. I’m healthier and more productive than I’ve been in years, and the minimal sacrifices and difficult changes I made to accomplish the things I wanted to accomplish have been entirely worth it.

I rebooted myself because I was existentially unhappy most of the time, and couldn’t figure out precisely why I felt so frustrated and unfulfilled in a life that was, by all objective measurements, very good. It took most of the year and a lot of commitment through a lot of challenges to realize that I was unhappy and unfulfilled because I had wandered away from the Art (yes, with a capital A) that has always been such a fundamental part of my life.

I’ve struggled with this a lot during my life. I didn’t choose to be an actor, and I don’t know if I would have chosen to be an actor if given the opportunity. It was a thing that my parents wanted me to do, and because like most kids I wanted my parents to be happy, I did it to the best of my ability. I honestly can’t say, and I don’t think I’ll ever know, if I stuck with it because I loved it, or because it was all I really knew how to do, or if it was the only thing I was good at that (and I often feel like I’m worst at what I do best). I still don’t know, and I imagine that I’ll continue to struggle with that question.

But doing this reset and taking this honest and clear look at my life revealed that I love creating, I love telling stories, and I love entertaining. I’m 44 now, and maybe I’ll never get the chance to be the actor I could have been if I hadn’t gotten bad advice and gone from Stand By Me to a shitty horror movie to a TV show and never back to important, dramatic films. Maybe I never had what it takes to be the actor River Phoenix was, or maybe I do and I’ll never get a chance to find out.

I see that, in the effort to share some answers, I’ve uncovered more questions. Great.

Staying focused on the good things: I found the confidence to write the things I needed to write, so I could write the things I had to write, so I could write the things that I wanted to write.

I wrote a whole bunch of short stories that will be published as a collection next year.

I started writing a short story that became a novella that still wants to be a novel that’s almost done.

I wrote a children’s book about a magical farting unicorn that’s awaiting illustration so I can publish it next year.

I designed a world with my son, and set a story inside of it that ended up being one of the most popular webseries I’ve ever done.

I spoke to a university audience about bullying. I spoke to the USA Science and Engineering Festival about the importance of art in science. I spoke to MENSA about being a nerd with depression.

I didn’t do much on-camera acting of consequence (and I don’t know if I ever will get the opportunity — this is clearly something I’m struggling with a lot and will continue to struggle with) but I did a lot of voice acting that I’m super proud of.

I fell back in love with Star Wars.

I went to Scotland with Anne, and we had an adventure.

Anne and I celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary. Fun fact: we actually met exactly 21 years ago tonight.

But the best thing that happened, the thing that makes 2016 something I won’t want to forget ever happened: My son got married, and I love his wife as much as I love him. My family grew this year in an awesome way and I couldn’t be happier about that.

*It’s accepted as fact that daily posting increases audience and reach for a blog. So I wondered if daily posting in December would do that. Maybe December isn’t the best month to try this, because people are busy with holiday things, but my stats indicate that overall views increased a little over twice what they were last month, but are below the average for the first quarter of the year. Daily views increased by about fifty percent over last month, but did not get close to where they were at the beginning of the year. I have no idea what this means, but if I was doing this to specifically build audience or grow reach, I’d consider it a failure. Because I was doing it just to give myself something to do and make posting less precious, though, I’m glad I did it.