Thank God. I don’t care how you feel about 2016 and what it brought you, that sentence is still true. Be thankful.

This year was a year of gifts for me. It was amazing. I started the year with one of the biggest blessings I’ve ever received. I was gifted an airline ticket to spend the holidays with my family, a ticket that took me from India to the US and back–business class. Generosity, was a constant theme for me this year. People have been overtly and overly generous to me this year. From housing, to Rio 2016, to gifts, to divine giving. Everything I was given to me this year was timely. As in, right on time for the need/desire. I’m not sure I did anything to deserve anything. But I thank God.

I put together a little album of some of my favorite pictures from 2016. Some of these I posted on social, but most I did not. These were just special moments and big memories I will never forget. All the pictures came from my smart phone. Resolution 2016: Let someone else take the picture.

Another thing I would like to highlight from this year are the amazing collaborations that happened. I wasn’t particularly involved in any of these things but this year it seemed all of my worlds collided. Some are music some are business, but they are all awesome. Resolution 2016: Don’t start anything on your own, work with someone else.

First the music, omg to these collabs this year, God bless the messenger:

The next collaboration I love is Derek Jeter’s The Player’s Tribune. What a great idea and what a powerful platform. This site absolutely stormed 2016, professional and amateur athletes were posting their breaking news through the site and TPT’s content never waivered or dulled out.

Another collaboration I love is Davids Tent. I’ll let you read about it yourself, but I enjoyed stopping by the tent several times this year. It would not be possible if several organizations did not pitch in their time, voices, and money.

Google Translate was my favorite collaboration of the year. When I headed to Rio de Janiero I found their advertisements were trending! I hadn’t seen Google advertise this service before but I’m so glad they did. It made the local Cariocas and the tourist’s lives a lot easier. I’m sure it saved a lot of headache over the course of the trip. And the ads were very cute, if you check out the album you’ll see a picture of me with one.

Collaborative work is slowly turning into the trend. Though I’m very much an entrepreneur at heart, I will continue to pursue collaborative efforts over my own. What we do together will last longer.

2016 has a bad wrap sheet in media, but I guarantee more good things happened than bad this year. We live to fight another day. Welcome 2017.