Happy Holidays & Happy New Year - End of 2017

Well, it's that time of year again - the time where the year kinda ends. 

2017 has definitely been an odd year for the world, with the nightmare that is American politics, terrorism and scares of it around the country and world, more celebrity deaths, and not to mention that recent Amtrak derailment in Washington. Still, despite that, it's generally been a good year for myself.

This year marks the resolution of some of my own longstanding goals and personal issues, which makes this a good year in and of itself of course, though I also learned a lot this year. I'm now legally an adult, I got to experience railfanning a steam engine (twice!) for the first time, I discovered music mixing and how much I enjoy that (I'm not about to call myself a DJ yet, haha!) (Bonus: My 2017 'End of the Year' mix), I've even started tinkering with basic graphic design, plus my continuing enjoyment of photography. An interesting bonus appeared in the last few months in that I've found that I really enjoy writing, but with the length of some of these posts, you probably already figured that one out!

The downside of all that - among other things - is that I've done progressively less and less work with Trainz. A healthy combination of doing other, more fun things, disenchantment with the game, and waiting on someone to get me the dang DEM of Montana have all put me off of the game a bit. There's been far less content made and released by myself this year than I had hoped, and that's something I'd like to change for 2018. I've got a few goals for next year, the one I just mentioned included. What are yours?

So, to wrap up, 2017's treated me alright, despite whatever the hell is going on in my country and those around me. How about you?

As a little bonus (and because I have nothing else I can release right now), I'm putting up my Silver Lines / SLRR Phase 3 / Executive F7 units in the downloads section - shoot, it's Christmas time, why not?! Plus, take a look at the new 'Acknowledgements' page under the Misc tab, that thing's been a long time coming!

Cheers,
​SM