2012 Relfections

In 2012 I learned a lot about loss.  I learned how to get through it and help others when they are suffering from it.  I have to admit 2012 wasn't a very good year for me.  This is supposed to be such a wonderful country and yet we have:

March 31, 2012—A gunman opened fire on a crowd of mourners at a North Miami, Florida, funeral home, killing two people and injuring 12 others.
April 2, 2012—A 43-year-old former student at Oikos University in Oakland, California, walked into his former school and killed seven people, “execution-style.” Three people were wounded.
April 6, 2012—Two men went on a deadly shooting spree in Tulsa, Oklahoma, shooting black men at random in an apparently racially motivated attack. Three men died and two were wounded.
May 29, 2012—A man in Seattle, Washington, opened fire in a coffee shop and killed five people and then himself.
July 20, 2012—James Holmes enters a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises and opens fire with a semi-automatic weapon; twelve people are killed and fifty-eight are wounded.
December 14, 2012—One man, and possibly more, murders a reported twenty-six people at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, including twenty children, before killing himself.
(Just to name a few, there is a full list at http://www.thenation.com/blog/171774/fifteen-us-mass-shootings-happened-2012-84-dead  if you would like to see all 16 major shootings in the U.S.)
So I guess this wasn't that great of a year for lots of people, but it wasn't the only downs to the year, and I have a couple of personal downers too. First off my grandmom moved in with us, which I loved and I'm sure she enjoyed the company, but she, at the time,was struggling with cancer so it was very hard for her the year that she stayed with us until she passed away in the summer. There was also my grandpa who died earlier in the year in California.  Another was family friends parents died within 2 weeks of each other.  In addition some of my closest friends moved to places like Tennessee and Texas.  Loss is hard to live with but I think it has helpped me a lot throughout the year, made me stronger in a way.  But don't get me wrong the U.S. has had many great accomplishments like taking out Osama bin laden and ending the war in Iraq, but still I feel like the world is turning into one big battleground with all of the wars and deaths surrounding us.
I like to make new years resolutions, but I almost never keep them. BUT!!!! I will try this year so here they are:

• Drop under 29 seconds in my fifty freestyle
• Survive the next end of the world
• Drop under a 1:09 in my  hundred freestyle
• Follow my dreams
• Go 2,450 yards or more in my 30 minute swim
• Get better at the Tuba
• Graduate high school and go to college
• Don't stink at life
• Take at least 2 honors classes
• Solve world hunger