2017 was one of the more "unexpected" years in the past couple of decades... in the broadest sense, almost nothing we'd planned for came to pass... and some highly unexpected things happened.

With some sadness, I decided to close down an online business in January... I had had it since 2007, but due to competition from "perfectly qualified" people in Southeast Asia I pretty much stopped making an income. That was right after new year's, and thankfully it was just one of five things I was involved with. Three weeks later I happened upon this thing called Steemit, and rekindled my love of social blogging.

Several months later, I was stunned to discover that this was NOT "all promises and no delivery." We weren't just playing for "Monopoly Money" here...

Our middle son (28) quit his stable job and moved home to live with us for a while. Totally unexpected... that moved some of our other plans all over the map.

Unexpected: One of our cars needed repairs beyond being worth fixing... also unexpected: some friends gave us a car they had inherited from an elderly parent and had no use for.

Unexpected: In July, my wife made the decision to give up her home life coaching practice due to lagging business... and go back to a "regular" part time job. Unexpected: less than 12 hours later she got a new $500 a month client, through a referral, reversing her previous decision.

It seemed like every time we made plans to DO something, it went wrong, and every time we made plans to STOP doing something, we were saved by a Hail Mary.