August 20, 2014 the final day in the year of the headline calendar project, amazing. Personally it was not a very good day for me as the day started by finding out that the herpetic lesion on my eyelid had now spread to my cornea. Then I went to pick up my new glasses happy in the idea that my existing pair had actually remained intact before the new ones arrived for the first time ever only to find out that the glasses were not going to work out, therefore giving my glasses time to break. The weather was bleak and cold, feeling more like fall than summer.

We all seem to feel that time rushes now that we are older but I have to say that this past year has seemed like several years. When I think back to that first headline and the Syrian chemical weapons attack, it can’t possibly be only one year. Of all the main story-lines, the only one that has ended is Nelson Mandela’s death. The rest of the stories are all still ongoing.

I have felt overwhelmed by the totality of this past year’s history. I have also become addicted to writing these headlines down every day and I am going to be hard-pressed to stop cold turkey.

I also wonder how the threads of these stories will play out in the future and how far into the future are they going to ripple. Am I going to look back on one innocent headline and see that it changed the world ten, twenty years later? Will they ever find flight MH370?

Even though I will officially stop recording the current affairs headlines today, I know I will always be noting the subjects that I followed for many more years to come.

PS This project’s genesis began in the 1991 Iraq war and as this project comes to an end, Iraq has come full circle.