Here you have a year, rendered in moments. Each moment is exactly one second in length. There would be 365 of them, if not for the 19 days when I forgot to pull out my phone and shoot anything.

The idea for this video comes from a fellow named Cesar Kuriyama. He’s made one of these annually since 2011. He even did a TED talk about it.

Me, I’ve done this little exercise just once before. 2014’s video was fun to make, and fun to watch. This time around, the actualities accrue into something a bit heavier. For sure, there are happy seconds to be found in here. Plenty of birthday cakes, backyard parties and cute pets on tap. Watch for the total eclipse of the sun on August 21.

But 2017 was also a year that included news of the sudden and unexpected passing of our friend Ann (February 23) and a visit to see my oldest brother Jerry (May 15), shortly before he succumbed to cancer (shortly after July 25). Less apparent to most viewers is that the happy baby shower glimpsed on October 1 preceded the sad loss of my niece Lindsey’s first child, Jaxon.

Bummed out yet? Did I mention the headstone? It’s a nice new one, (May 19) installed at my parent’s grave after the death of my mother in October of 2016. She was 96.

There’s also the matter of certain political events (January 20) which cast a pall over… well, everything. Then as the year nears its end, a second, much less metaphorical pall is cast by the Tubbs fire (October), which destroyed a good portion of our town of Santa Rosa and took 22 lives.

In contrast, 2014 seems a pretty sweet and carefree time.