DAY 28: Your Year, in Great Detail...

Almost 7 full months of 2011 have passed and I can honestly say that this year has been an interesting one. Not good, but not bad either. 2008-2010 were very rough years, but slowly each year got a little better than the preceding year. I would say that 2011 is definitely following in the same trend, despite the hard moments. I say that this year has been an interesting year cause I think I've continued growing as a person in the areas that I wanted to focus on in the beginning of the year. I wanted to make an effort to travel to new cities and have managed to visit Virginia Beach, VA, Key West, FL, Greenback, TN, and Columbus, OH so far. I also wanted to make some big changes in my life that needed to be done in order to make me happier. In March, I went from commuting almost 4 hours per day for work to commuting only 14 minutes per day, by moving into an apartment closer to my job. This was a huge change that made me a lot happier in many ways and I do not regret doing it. As I stated in the last entry, I also sucked it up and took some action on things that I would not have normally done in the past. I always tread carefully in life and this was quite a hard task for me to accomplish. Most of these action items did not turn out well in my benefit, but I have learned that it's better to take a risk and fail than to never take a risk at all. The most consoling part is that at least you know you did everything you could; probably one of the most important, if not the most important, lessons I could learn this year.

"You miss 100% of the shots you never take."

While there has been a lot of heartache & disappointment this year, I'm trying every day to learn lessons from the more trying times and spin it into something positive for myself. My biggest fear in dealing with all of the hardships that life can throw at someone, is that I will lose hope for the future and it's a struggle every day to make sure that doesn't happen. Two areas that I would like to improve upon for the rest of 2011 is health & fitness, and finances. These are the two personal areas that could do with the most improvement in my life and I hope when New Year's Eve is upon us, I can report that I've made some strides in those categories.

There is strong evidence in my life that shows the rest of this year could get quite challenging and I hope I remember this blog entry and the words I wrote when I need it most.