New Years Eve

I've never been much for New Year's resolutions.  I don't really have the willpower for them, and I know it. I do sort of like to look back on the past year and try to learn something or other though. This past year seems like it has contained its share of hard lessons, the first of which is:

And carry a towel if you really want to be sure of preparedness. This time last year, I had a major case of the fear about what 2017 might hold.  This year, while I'm not at all happy about the state of things, I guess the unknown and the things you can make up for yourself to worry about are always mostly worse than what actually goes down. Worrying about the future is one of the most futile ways to occupy your time and it is pretty much a total drain on your emotional reserves.  We all do it, and I don't know anyone who feels like it is a good way to live.  Bad stuff is going to happen, and pretending that it won't will not help at all, but when it does you're going to need all your resources (towels included) to deal with it adequately.
This time last year, I was hoping against hope that a good friend of mine would be able to beat cancer.  He didn't, and I needed to figure out how to deal with that reality.  This time last year, I thought maybe Trump would get us into a war of some sort. He didn't, in fact most of the most dire fears I had about what was going to happen to us as a nation have not materialized. I'm still regularly embarrassed by what he says and dismayed by what he does, but I have decided that I really need to settle down and deal with the reality of the situation rather than what I think might happen because of the decisions made by people I have absolutely no control over.  In other words, I need to heed the words of a wise teacher:

Fear is the path to the Dark Side.

Fear leads to anger, Anger leads to hate,

Hate leads to suffering.

Since I appear to be rolling with a sci-fi themed New Years, how could I leave out the Bene-Gessarit litany against fear:

I must not fear,

Fear is the mind killer.

Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear,

I will permit it to pass over me,

and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn my inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.

None of this is really a resolution, just things that I have needed to learn, or re-learn.  I'm putting them down, with pictures, so that some time I can remember what it was I probably shouldn't have forgotten.