Can you believe there are only four days left in 2012? Where has the year gone? The older I get, the more I believe that time is relative, and it moves in proportion to your current age. There seems to be something inherently unfair about that, but one lesson I learned a really long time ago is that life is anything but fair. Therefore, the lesson you need to learn with time is to enjoy it while you have it. Don’t wish for time to move faster, for one day you will get your wish and realize what a foolhardy wish it was.

This year has had both its good and bad moments, and we experienced those both personally and as a nation. Hopefully, in the end, when you are assessing your year, you will have more good than bad moments.

For us, 2012 was a big year. Cody, my baby, graduated from high school, sharing valedictorian honors with one of his friends. Nicole graduated from college and began working on her MBA. Cody and Tiffany set a wedding date, so we’re counting down to July 13, 2013, and are busy making wedding plans. Byron and Theresa have yet to set a date, but we anticipate getting one soon. I got to see Rick Springfield for the first time in April, and then got to see him again in October. We also saw Journey and Bruce Springsteen this year. And, of course, perhaps the biggest event of 2012 happened on July 27 when my first grandchild was born. Mady has been a wonderful blessing to us all.

We have a lot to look forward to in 2013. As I’ve already mentioned, there is at least one wedding, possibly two, for our family. We’re looking forward to all the “firsts” that Mady will experience. My daughter will finish her MBA. We’re hoping Trav will be accepted to medical school.

Of course, we have no way to know all that 2013 will hold for us. We have to hope and pray for the best. Simply watching the headlines can leave us in quite the funk. There seems to be very little to look forward to, especially with that fiscal cliff looming there threatening to make 2013 a near-disaster for many of us. That may very well be our reality. However, if we’re to function, we have to do our best to try to keep a positive point of view. Trust me; I know how easy it can be to let an overwhelming situation encompass and drown you. We can’t do that, though. We have to look for the positive things that will occur in 2013, and there will be some good things that happen.

Over the next couple of days, I’m going to have to reflect about 2012 and how successful I was with my resolutions, and I’m going to have to decide what I want my goals for 2013 to be. Many of you will be doing the same. It will be easy to get caught up in what we didn’t do in 2012, but we need to focus instead on what we were able to accomplish and then focus on what we would like to accomplish in the new year. None of us had a perfect 2012. None of us accomplished everything we wanted to. However, all of us can us build on what we did accomplish and can work to make 2013 an even better year.