Hello Everyone,

Welcome to The Invisible Vision Project’s Blog.

The year 2017 is almost coming to an end, now it’s a perfect time to write an end of year review. Obviously, not every little details that’d happened in 2017 would be written in this blog, otherwise, it would no longer be a blog post, and it’d probably be a book!

So, looking back at the start of 2017, (to be exact, the end of 2016), a nightmare had started, and that was a nightmare of my health decline. If I could use one word to describe 2017, I would say that 2017 was quite a painful year, painful, in its literal meaning, throughout this year, I was in constant struggle and battle with pain, both emotionally and physically. However, this doesn’t mean that all of 2017 was absolutely terrible, I had a lot of good moments, and memories with many positive people I have in my life, and that has made this painful year so much brighter.

If you remember from my last year’s Year End Review 2016blog, I wrote that review in a timeline manner, and, I’m hoping to do the same for this year (I’m also open to suggestions/ideas if any of you have about writing an end of year review, I can look into that for the future!).

To start and before getting into the timeline, I feel the need to say this: one of the biggest highlights of 2017 was that it was the first year ever that I had concerns about continuing my studies, after being a student for more than 20 years of my life, and being in university for the 7th year, I love school and I especially love what I study and do in school now; but, on multiple occasions, I was advised by my medical team as well as my caring friends that I should take a year off from school. And, as for me, I didn’t make that decision, and I’m glad that I didn’t (read on to find out why!).

So, here is a brief timeline of important moments/memories of 2017:

In March of 2017, I gave two speeches at my university, one to the Adaptive Technology Centre and the other in a classroom, in both, I received very positive feedbacks from my audiences. I was very happy, not only with the feedbacks, but also, with my own improvements I’ve made in public speaking.

In April, I was a keynote speaker for a committee I was a member of  (Accessibility Queen’s), and I spoke at a brunch event, this event made me a little nervous, but the turnout was great.

In June, I participated in two (fundraising and speaking) events for the CNIB. I always feel comfortable and confident going to CNIB events and hoping to do more of that in the future! [I’m an ambassador speaker for the CNIB].

In July, you may recall, I wrote a blog about my trip to China (read it here). This was my very first time in almost 13 years returning to China since I came to Canada in 2004; it was a very important trip, and I had a lot of good memories.

Returning from China, in August, I attended the second CNIB fundraising event-Night Steps in Kingston, because I had a lot of fun attending this event the first time in 2016, (read my blog post about the first experience here, I didn’t blog about my second experience), but I certainly had a lot of fun at the event this year, too!

[Now, I thought I should mention this, nothing really significantly happened in the months of September to November. I wasn’t very involved in advocacy or public speaking (in fact, I’ve turned down some opportunities around this time), the reasons for this were that I was very busy with school; and, I had a lot of struggles with my health. However, I managed to participate in one unforgettable event at school, and that was The Inspiring Women event, it was very inspirational and memorable. And, what’s more important was the power that positive people have given me. It was so important during times like these to experience the power of positive people have around me, even though, the miracle of positivity did not necessarily make my health any better, but, their smile and their kind/encouraging/positive words go beyond a cure!]

Then, in December, the final month of 2017, I completed quite a few projects/ tasks/ achievements. With the help of a sighted friend, I completed the making of a tactile dress for a class project and presented it, that went very successful. Then, at the end of the school term, I went for a necessary medical procedure, this was not an easy decision to make, mainly because my biggest fear was the potential consequence of unable to return to school for January, but it went OK. Currently, I am still in recovery phase. Certainly, this doesn’t fix everything with my health, but, I will take one small step and one day at a time to keep moving forward from now on! Also in December, I finished the making of One Thousand Paper Cranes project (in its literal meaning, the folding of exactly one thousand origami paper cranes!), this project started around mid-September, it’s very personal, and it’s about wish-making (and that’s all I could share about this!).

Lastly, I would like to share with you my reading achievements for 2017, I won’t get into the details of the books, but maybe in future blogs, I’ll write reviews or comments about what I learned from some of these books:

Rising Strong by Brene Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown
The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine N. Aron
Getting Grief Right by Patrick O’Malley with Tim Madigan
The Girl On the Train by Paula Hawkins
The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha

So, this concludes today’s blog post, I apologize that it’s a fairly long post, but I really hope you enjoyed reading it!

By: The Invisible Vision Project