Many years ago a book was published called All I Really Needed to Know I Learned from Watching Star Trek. There were a lot of people like myself who took that title to heart, because Star Trek, Star Wars and other cult show and movies were the blueprints we used to navigate our lives.

The past few weeks I’ve puttered around the house and in that time I thought about the past two and a half years. It occurred to me, using the Star Trek season model, that the past few years of my life have played like the first three seasons of The Next Generation. I’m not talking about story lines, but in the actual response of fans and critics to the series in those first three years.

The first year of Next Generation began with fans eager to embrace the new voyages of the Enterprise. It was a new crew and new situations, but there was a sense of familiarity to the makeup of the crew. Sure, some of the early episodes were, and I’ll be generous about it, clunky, but I think a lot of us were so grateful that Star Trek was on the air we were willing to forgive the bumps in the road. There were some gems episodes and some mediocre episodes, but on the whole the first season was OK.

In thinking about it, a few years ago I had fallen into a routine. The routine kept stability in my life but it didn’t allow me to grow. I stayed safe within my lane. I would have the say the high point at that time was getting my cat from the animal shelter. The ground shifting event was getting a call from my mother offering to help out in the purchase of a home. I know it’s a stretch, but that event was like the last episode of the first season of The Next Generation. What should have been a cool opening for a new chapter in my life actually turned out to be the beginning of a strange trip to uncharted and complicated territory.

The second season of The Next Generation was a mess at the time. There is no way to gloss over that fact. There may have been a couple of gems in the many episodes but for the most part it was a low point for the series. I believe if it had been on a network, the show might not have survived to the next season. The first season had anticipation to fuel expectations through the rough patches. The second season had the added burden of the loss of the fan favorite doctor in Gates McFadden. She was replaced by a competent actress in Diana Muldaur, but the chemistry between her character and the rest of the crew didn’t mix well. Even with the turmoil, seeds were placed in some of the second season episodes that would become key elements for the rest of the series. It was in the second season when Guinan was introduced, as well as the Borg. This was also the season when we learned a lot about Klingon culture, which became a major story arch in later seasons. While the original run of the second season may have been confusing, the season laid the groundwork for some of the series most talked about story arcs and characters.

Last year seemed like it would be an easy year. I was turning 50 and I had completed the paperwork on my new home. A number of nagging financial issues were being worked through and it seemed like a few months into the year things would be smooth sailing. It didn’t work out that way. It seemed if I made two steps forward I had to make one step back. Yes, I was moving forward, but the occasional backtracking was frustrating. By September I had been hit with a number of personal setbacks. I wanted to keep my head up, but the pressure was beginning to cause cracks in my carefully constructed reality. I always managed to stand up, dust myself off and move forward but the knockdowns were taking their toll.

By the time I learned about my father’s illness and visited my parents, I knew I had to do something to change the direction I was going. I could see that the road I was on wasn’t going to end well, but I didn’t know exactly how to make the course correction. This was about the time I went through a mini midlife crisis. It wasn’t as dramatic as something you would see in the cinema. With no significant other, no kids and not a lot of money, I wasn’t about to go out and buy a sports car and leave my wife and kids for a trophy woman.

I was able, with all the turmoil going on, to begin to work on projects that would turn around my fortunes. Just like the second season of The Next Generation, I started seeing minor things that happened in my life in the past year that could be the building blocks of potentially better things for me in the future.

By season three, The Next Generation hit a level of quality science fiction stories it would maintain until the end of its run. Gates McFadden returned to the series. The story arcs began having consequences for the world constructed by the writers. Some professional critics consider the third season the best season of the series seven year run. Behind the scenes, season three saw the hiring of Ronald D. Moore on the strength of a spec script. He went on to work on Deep Space Nine and Voyager, as well as creating the critically acclaimed re-imagined Battlestar Galactica.

In December I met with someone whom I haven’t seen in years. The reconnection proved to be more profound than I wanted to admit. I had declared 2015 as my year of upgrade. I had a number of projects lined up that would lay the foundation for bigger projects in the future. My original plan was to get the initial projects completed by the end of the year. It looks like I will have everything up and running by the end of March at the latest, but it wouldn’t surprise me if everything is operational the beginning of March. The friend I reconnected with had a way of creatively motivating me in the past and it seems like the same connection is still working. I’d like to believe the things happening now are leading to bigger things.

Yes I want to have a creative and quality series run.