Every January I put together a montage of photos taken throughout the previous year. A chronological 12x12 grid as a reminder of events, big and small. The top row has 12 photos from January, the 2nd is February and so on.

This grid of photos from 2017 marks my 10th year of looking back (and then looking forward). A huge version lives on Flickr and previous entries live under the #montage tag.

2017 was hard. Easily the hardest year of all my years. It was very sad and it was very happy. 2017 was the year that my dad died and the year that Beth was born. Everything else that happened doesn't matter.

We found out that Alex was pregnant in April and told our family in June (on Father's Day). By then, my dad's health was on the downturn and I had to face the reality that his time was running out. He died in November.

I wrote a bit about him here. I'll write more someday.

Alex's pregnancy was, as far as pregnancies go, and as far as I can say from a dad's-eye-view, pretty great. We enjoyed keeping the news secret from everyone at the start, we enjoyed telling everyone in the middle and we enjoyed imagining who our little pal might turn out to be at the end. We hung out a lot, just the two of us, as the photos make clear.

Turns out, our little pal is Beth. Born just shy of Hogmanay, she kicked off our New Year and lifted everyone's spirits. She's the best. I'll write more about her someday.

Other than that, everything was pretty chaotic. My work was a mess, my diet was a mess, my sleep was (and still is) a mess. Messy, disorganised, unproductive. Bleh blah bloo.

The winter has been long and it isn't over yet. I've lost damn near 3 months worth of work time since November and I've got loads catch up on. Boy is it weighing on me. For the sake of my mental health, I'm toying with the idea of abandoning a few ships and starting fresh, despite the headaches that'll cause other people. Is that a good idea or is that a bad idea? Tweet me.

Anyway, I have no idea what the hell life'll look like come January 2019 but, as I say every year: always forwards, never backwards.