Life By the Numbers: That Kind of Year

2017 IN NUMBERS

0 arm workouts.

1 time eating Panera Bread, and it was so good.  I had to fly all the way to Dover to do this.  Not like they aren't all over the place where I live or anything.

1 pair designer jeans purchased.  I got lucky and found Seven jeans for $50 on a mess of a clearance rack at Macy's.

2 times eating cheese spaetzle in Germany.  I love it so.

3 flights to Las Vegas.


3 books read.  I am not proud of this.

4 times eating Cracker Barrel.

4 nights out that ended in dancing.  1 of those nights included Karaoke.

5 countries traveled to. Germany, France, Greece, Spain, and Czech Republic.

10 consecutive days spent crying.

15 Uber rides, and that's just the ones I requested with my own app.  I spent $175 on Uber rides in the month of December.  It was just that kind of month.

23 blog posts written.  It gets lower and lower each year.  Daily blogging never made sense to me, but now weekly posts are passé and this is my first post in two months.  I'm not sure how I feel about this.

24 doctor visits.

42 Amazon orders.  This includes things for myself, other people, and a few returns.

43 longest consecutive nights spent with my husband.  

44 days spent outside country.

45 number of consecutive days without weighing myself.  This was unprecedented and I loved it.

86 total nights spent with my husband spread over 5 visits.

89 Netflix DVD rentals. 

177 number of consecutive days spent not tracking calories, and counting.  I don't miss it at all.

525, 600 minutes.  This we know from Rent. 

I lost track of how many wine glasses I drank.  It would probably be more accurate to count it in bottles, and I'm pretty sure I'd be too embarrassed to tell even if I did.  I ate so many ice cream cones over the summer I thought I'd turn into one.  If I knew how many, I might be embarrassed of that number too.  Absolutely no regrets about either.  I'm not really sure what to say about 2017 or what to call it.  Good? Bad?  Neither word really describes it because 2017 was a very mixed bag of both.

THE GOOD STUFF

MJ orchestrated the biggest and best birthday a girl could ask for by getting my sisters to come out to Vegas and surprise me.  I cried when opened the door and saw my big sister standing in the doorway.  I cried when my little sister strolled into the house a few hours later, like it was no big deal, then I cried again when MJ walked into the restaurant where my family was having dinner when he was supposed to be in Germany.  Talk about good stuff.  It was really the best.  It was such a happy day.  Time with people you love is so precious, and it was the best birthday gift anyone could ever give me.    

I got to a really good place with my manuscript in April. Finally. After all the years of writing and revising it felt really great to know once and for all that it's the best I could do. Not only that, but I think it's pretty darn good. I love what I've done and perhaps 2018 needs to be the year for getting it out there.

The highlight of my year had to be what will probably always be known as the best and longest vacation of my life.  I got to live that magical travel lifestyle you see all over Instagram, and I'm telling you,  it was grand.  MJ and I were together for six whole weeks.  We got to travel all over Europe, and I had the time of my life.  Such a thing is not likely to happen again until I retire, but that's okay.  It will happen again, and until then I have all the pictures, snap chat videos I saved and memories that never fail to make me smile. #bestsummerever.

I went to Las Vegas three times to see my parents.  Two of those visits included the whole family, which was great, and one of those visits was just me for Christmas.  I had them all to myself.  It kind of made me feel like a kid again and it was nice.   

I quit calorie tracking altogether and I semi broke up with the scale.  I never thought I'd see the day that I could go days on end without knowing what I weigh.  It doesn't seem like a big deal, but for me it is huge because I've spent my entire life fixating on calories and my weight way more than I should have.  It's always been about the numbers for me, and now that it's not I feel so free. I eat what I want.  Sometimes it's healthy, sometimes it's not, and it's just not that big of a deal.  I wish I'd done it a long time ago, but it wasn't going to happen until I was ready.  This year I finally was.

THE BAD STUFF

I try to be a really good sport but this whole long distance marriage thing is really, really hard.  It's hard on each of us individually in different ways, and it's hard on the relationship.  We've been apart for a year before, but this time around is going on almost 1 1/2 years and the end date is still unknown.  The visits have been pretty regular, and I'm grateful that we haven't had to go too many months without seeing each other, but I still feel like a year plus of our lives together has been stolen and I'm ready for that to come to an end.

Sleepless nights were a thing this year.  A really bad thing that turned me into a miserable person who can't sleep at night, and sleep walks through life instead of living in it.  There is more to life than eating, Netflix, going to bed, and picking up groceries at Walmart.  I want towant to do more, but the problem is that I'm usually so damn exhausted that I have just enough energy to get through the work week.  I got nothing left after that, physically or mentally.  Work or life.  Sometimes it feels like I can't have both, and I really need both.  My work life balance needs a serious overhaul, and ridding myself of Insomnia will be the key to fixing that.  But how?  Sounds like a New Year's resolution.

The great post #bestsummerever crash of September 2017 was the lowest and the darkest point for me all year, and that wasn't even the month that included the 10 consecutive days of crying.  That would be November/December.  It wasn't any one thing, just a bunch of things that have really tested my ability to cope and keep a smile on my face.  I was so down about everything that I really could not see the light at the end of the tunnel.  About anything.  It was a very sad and lonely place to be, but I bounced back, and was in much better spirits in October.
 
The shoulder issues that started in 2016, continued into 2017, got worse, and culminated in a pretty tough diagnosis.  That's an entirely different post.  Suffice it to say, that dealing with it has not been easy, and it's not likely to change any time soon.

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So you see, it's hard to explain.  It was just that kind of year.  Vastly different from the year we got married that stands out to me as one of the happiest times in my life where I would say without hesitation, that it was 100% a wonderful year.  Not every year is going to be like that.  There were some really wonderful once in a lifetime kind of things that happened in 2017, but there were also some really hard things that happened in 2017.  I think that's what you call life.  It isn't always perfect, but it is good, which means there is always something different, grander, better to look forward to.

Maybe one of my New Year's resolutions for 2018 should be to count the number of bottles of wine I drink so I can include it in the next year end post.  Nah, I can already predict it's going to be another thing I lose count of.  I'm definitely planning to read more, sleep better, cry less, and live with my husband again.  I also want another pair of designer jeans.  I'm even willing to pay full price if I have to.