January 1, 2017
Well, 2016 turned out to be a year of unanticipated outcomes, and as a 47 year old, I am appreciating just how finite and precious life is. I guess a lot of it has to do with the recent death of Carrie Fisher. I am a child of the ’70s and remember my father taking to see Star Wars at the Cinerama theater in Seattle back in 1977. Like a lot of other kids, I was completely engrossed in all things Star Wars. I had almost all the figurines, the Star Wars themed bed sheets and comforter, the Star Wars lunch pail, just about everything commercialized I had.
Also, Star Wars was a new phenomenon with it being serialized and every three years my friends and I anticipated the next installment with “The Empire Strikes Back” and finally “The Return of the Jedi”.
I didn’t expect that Carrie Fisher’s death would have such an impact on me, but over the course of the last couple of days I’ve been feeling a real mourning for something I can’t say I’ve lost…that’s not the right word for it, but a bittersweet remembrance of being a seven year old going with his father to see a movie and that event being a turning point in my life. This time last year, I took my father to see the new installment in the Star Wars franchise, “The Force Awakens”, and having a feeling of having gone full-circle. I don’t have any children of my own, but to be there with my father was a real treat.
I’m not one to get upset over a celebrity’s death and I never get sucked in to feeling any type of sympathy for people that achieve fame and success – they made it and if their achievements don’t yield the return they were hoping for, then they need to reexamine what makes them want to get up in the morning…but, I digress. 😉
Going back to Carrie Fisher, I decided that I want to enter 2017 with appreciation for everything I have in my life and I also want to keep a journal (or blog) about my life over the course of this year; my daily ho-hum routine, my likes, my rants and raves, and any other thing that might take my fancy. I’m not doing this for any sense of posterity or to fill a “void”; rather, I think of it as a diary of sorts that I can look back on and get a glimpse into what was going on in my little world on this or that date.
I think 2017 will be an exciting year and I’m happy to be here!
-Hunter