2018 is less than two weeks away!

(Edit: apparently I can’t count - 2018 is two weeks and a day away .....)

As the year comes to a close, I always find myself reflecting on the year quite a bit.  2017 was a pretty darn good year!  I started painting UV reef-inspired art.  I have found a renewed passion in the hobby with this new build.  I've made some really good friends thanks to this hobby!  

With the good always comes the bad.  Life isn't perfect, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself it is.  Reefing-wise, I had a challenging year.  It humbled me.  I almost crashed three tanks - at once - lost most of my corals and a lot of my fish.  I dealt with aiptasia, bubble algae, flatworms, monti-eating nudibranchs and more.  I almost gave up!  But I didn't :)

One thing I need to continually remind myself is we all make mistakes. We ALL do.  We make mistakes in business, we make mistakes in hobbies, we make mistakes in all parts of life and it's ok.  That's part of life.  It's what we do with those mistakes that counts. Do we turn them into a learning opportunity and move on to bigger and better things?  Or do we dwell on them?  The choice is up to us.  We define ourselves, nobody does it for us.  So, while this post is focused around this hobby, it really can pertain to all parts of our lives. Ive made plenty of mistakes in reef keeping  but I choose to learn from them and move on rather than let them define me. 

So that's my mantra for today!  Now I need to go clean some bathrooms since we are celebrating with some of our reefing friends tonight!  

As always, thanks for reading!