Get busy with life’s purpose, toss aside empty hopes, get active in your own rescue–if you care for yourself at all–and do it while you can.
-Marcus Aurelius
So 2017 came and went…and much like all the years prior, it seemed to go by way too fast! The end of the year is always a natural time to reflect on the past and make goals for the future, but we should also use this time to realize that all the goal setting and thinking about the changes we want to make in the upcoming year is absolutely worthless if we don’t take ACTION!
For myself, 2017 was a year of exponential personal growth. I am a believer in the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which states that change happens in rapid bursts rather than as a slow, gradual process. It is easy to become complacent in life and fail to grow or change because the unknown is painful, or the inertial barrier to change is too strong to break. These are weaknesses of the human condition. However, something changed for me this year. I developed a sense of immediacy, as if all of a sudden I realized that time is marching on and I’m not going to live forever. I tossed aside excuses in 2017…well let’s just say there will be more to come about this after the new year!
As far as the blog goes, we saw a big increase in traffic this year. Retroflexions had 200,000 page views in 2017, which is ten-times higher than this same time last year. There is still quite a bit of room for growth, but I’m happy with the trend, especially considering that this site is still a DIY operation.
I was also recently interviewed by a writer for Health.com about gas. In lieu of a new blog post, please read the full article and enjoy all of my profound quotes about farts! (I finally got to be a quotable authority on something…)
Where is Retroflexions going in 2018? Well, the end of 2017 was a little too busy for me to post as often as I would have liked, but I do have a bunch of new stuff coming for 2018! A few articles about alcohol use and the liver, cancer prevention, and some stuff about personal growth and goal setting is in the works. I should probably write another article about C. diff and/or anal sex, since those two articles remain my most popular articles on this site (you should see what terms some readers are searching Google for to land here on Retroflexions…it would make a sailor blush). And for all the fans of the colonoscopy stuff, I have my personal account of drinking the bowel prep coming soon, as well as some new polyp resection pictures (get excited)! I will hopefully have more to share with you from my wonderful guest contributors, (especially Stefani Pappas and her many excellent articles about nutrition!) and I have a few more guests in mind to bring some diversity to the site. But most exciting of all, I have some big news to share in 2018! You’ll just have to wait a couple of weeks to hear it…
If you enjoy what we are doing here at Retroflexions, the best way to show your support is to share the site with a friend. It’s easy to email an article or share something on Facebook, and you will help the site grow. You can also sign up for our free newsletter so that you never miss a post!
Thank you for reading! Here’s to a great 2018!
-Fred
About Frederick Gandolfo, MD
