There is a current trend of looking back to 2016 as some sort of benchmark year.

Was 2016 a genuine wrinkle in time. I do not look back on it with any great fondness. I had an iphone and took some great photos.

But 2016 was a hard year with tough decisions, sadness, badness and unkindness.

For large parts of 2016 I felt like I was hanging on to normal life while it swung me round and round on a crazy carousel.

In 2016 I discovered the Japanese word Setsunasa which means,

A tight feeling in the chest. Longing, love, sadness, nostalgia, all compressed into one sharp pain.

So when I think about 2016 that is my overwhelming recollection. But it was such a busy year and there were many positives. Looking through my 2016 photographs I have made myself aware that 2016 was far from all bad.

Time to reshape my recollections a little. Another useful Japanese word.

Wabi-Sabi.

The acceptance that nothing is permanent, and nothing is perfect, nothing is ever complete and yet finding quiet beauty in that reality rather than fighting it.