Dear friends, family, and college buddies I haven't laid eyes on in twenty years:

Boy, was 2017 amazing! Hilda joined the Peace Corps after realizing she couldn't afford community college. She's currently digging latrines in Sierra Leone, which she says is beautiful as long as you don't look at the human feces or feral dogs. We have high hopes she'll wear herself out after a year and come back to join the nursing program at a nonprofit institution of higher learning.

We recently learned there are tax cuts! This is great! We're looking forward to using our return to buy a new SUV that should be able to navigate the crumbling roadways we use to commute two hours each way to a soul-killing office job that will soon be replaced by robots.

In other news, Nancy made it through a round of breast cancer thanks to us learning that you can get an interest-free payment plan if you call the 800 number and tell them you have no money. You, too, could pay $35.18 a month for the next twenty years to each of ten different healthcare providers. #blessed

Little Jerod has been pursuing four different sports at the age of nine. The doctors say his concussions should heal up well and he's excited to play competitive league soccer year-round as long as his games continue to start before 11 pm on school nights. He may even see ten minutes of playing time in 2018. Woot!

Nancy and Alexander are looking forward to celebrating 23 years of marriage in December, when they realized they'll be making the same household income that they did in 1998 despite a 43% increase in healthcare costs. Nancy is excited her antidepressants will soon be covered under the maintenance medicine list on her high-deductible health plan.

What else? The family took an exciting trip this year to Duluth, where they took a tobaggan ride down the steepest hill in the middle of a winter storm. You haven't lived until you've crossed a busy intersection on black ice, amirite?

Nancy is still putting in twenty hours of unpaid work each week at the PTA after a round of budget cuts reduced the teaching staff by 18%. Alexander forwent dental care in order to pay for Hilda's totalled Corolla after they took out the stop sign on Highway 50. Thank God nobody was seriously injured, because man, we haven't hit the out-of-pocket max yet even in December. Even after cancer. But who's counting?

Hope you and yours are having a fantastic holiday season and avoid the Q4 layoffs at your employer. Happy New Year!

"Maybe, when you're in it, you just get through it, and it seems so much scarier to everyone else," she said.

"Maybe," I replied.

My friend Ann put it best: When someone tells you that you have cancer, it's like you're plunged into the deep end of the pool. Nobody can see you, nobody can help you. There's water in your eyes and your ears and your nose, and there's nothing in your world but the water; you can't see or think about anything but the water.

And then ... you hit the surface. Everyone around you is floating on a raft. They hand you a beer. The sun is shining, and the world is beautiful.

And you think ... did that seriously just happen, that part where I almost drowned?

This time last year I was unemployed, desperately hunting for my next thing. I realized I'd have to make a career pivot and reinvent myself away from the dying star that is paid journalism. All but abondoning social media after a decade of living with both ankles constantly submerged in that rushing river. Wondering who I am if none of what I worked so hard to achieve in the past means anything to the hiring managers I met with in the yawning maw of job sites into which for six months I poured four different versions of my resume? And why do I have more Twitter followers now when I never go over there? What does any of that mean? I don't know half of those people and there are more people following me on Twitter than there were in my hometown in 1992. And I know damn well none of those Twitter people listen to anything I say. It's all just Black Mirror until you start believing in it.

Then, suddenly, I surfaced. There were health benefits and a 401(k).

And then, less than 90 days later, breast cancer.

Ha!

As I end 2017, I'm in a way better place than I was in 2016. It's not because I'm stronger -- I think I was just as strong before as I am now and will probably hover at approximately this strength level until age or accident calls my endgame. It's more that I've started to accept the bad times a little easier.

It's tempting when all the things mount up to ask, why? I suprised myself by not doing a lot of this in 2017. I'm trying to ask, instead, why not me? Why shouldn't I read 50 books a year and let Drunk History replace everything I learned in high school? The next good thing is coming. And so is the next bad thing. Sometimes they'll take turns. Sometimes they'll pile on.

But they will never stop coming, because this is life, and strangely, life is not personal.

So if at the end of 2016 I was praying for resilience, at the end of 2017, I'm praying for a little luck. I've spent 2017 working on me, trying to teach myself some new skills so I can be ready if luck wants to find me in 2018. I've actively prepared for a good thing to happen to me. Hi, good thing. Just standing here, looking cute.

I WILL A GOOD THING TO HAPPEN TO ME IN 2018. I've prepared. I'm ready.

Come on, dammit.

"I'm scared to go back there," I said, gripping the reins more tightly in my hand.

The day before the horse beneath me had too much juice. He kept trotting when I said to walk. I forgot my tight circles. And then came the cyclist out from behind on my left, and suddenly Rowyn's back legs were in the air and I was falling to the right and in my mind's eye I saw a bone breaking on the pavement below and Rowyn and Jazz taking off for the barn with my girl clinging to Jazz's back.

I think I was actually more scared for her than me, and it should've been the other way around. In this scenario, I needed more help.

I got off my horse and called his owner. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely operate the phone.

He answered immediately. He was in the Plaza getting ready to do carriage rides. He wouldn't be back to the barn for five hours.

"What do I do?" I said.

"Get your act together and ride him back to the barn," he said. "You can't walk him back. Rita, you have to ride."

Sometimes in your life you would like the easier method back to the barn. This was not a time I was going to get it.

My girl said everything was fine, but my mothering instincts and my anxiety disorder kept projecting images of a broken back or fractured skull as we walked back, turning tight circles every 100 yards or so. I have never had a longer walk back to the barn in my life.

I kept reciting a little ditty, more for me than for him:

We're still friends

but I'm in charge.

Rita and Rowyn

go back to the barn.

If you've never been scared on a large animal, I'm sure this will sound ridiculous. However, if you've ever been on a tall horse and had said horse decide to deseat you on pavement, you'll be here with me.

I. Was. Terrified.

And I had a teenaged girl to get back to the barn, as well as two large animals who could and would yank my arm off if they felt like eating grass. And a two-laned road to cross between the park and the barn.

My friends, it just all the sudden felt REAL.

But we got back. We turned them out. They frolicked. We put them away. And I called the owner again. He said to meet him out there the next day.

So I did.

And we went back on the trail.

And I was terrified.

And it was fine.

And today, a week later, we went back. We turned him out. We saddled him up. We rode him. He was fine.

And so it is.

Some days you're the windshield, and some days, you're the fly.

Never forget the world is a crazy place.

Never forget the world is a beautiful place.

Never stop trying.

ONWARD.