Here comes your annual new year post. Yes, we are very much well into the New Year, but as I was away for most of the beginning of 2018, and am finally settling back into my home now, the idea of the new year is still sitting pretty fresh within me.

The past year of 2017 was a big one for me. While most people will go about saying that every year was the first year of your life (we love negativity!), I would have to disagree and say that 2017 was the best year of my life. I was the happiest in 2017, all of my friendships and relationships settled into a good place, and I found myself in all the right places.

2017 brought many new and amazing life experiences for me, some that I will be forever thankful for. I finally settled into who I truly was in 2017. So naturally, I decided to shatter and test that concept in 2018. Going into 2018, I knew who I was, but I wanted to explore who I used to be.I wanted to delve back into who I was before I really invented who I was.

Before I decided I wanted to be a writer before I had my favorite hobbies and before I had true knowledge of what was ahead. Before all that, I was a two-year-old dancing around in my living room to a Shania Twain concert DVD. I was my father’s son, constantly surrounded by country music and all the tractors and beer it brought.

So in a way, I am still that boy. Under all the makeup, layers of black clothing, and the city boy, he’s still there. So here I am, after years of molding myself into who I was truly inside, now looking for a part of me that I let sit in the shadows for years. With that being said, it’s not looking for a different version of me, exactly.

Instead, it is merely looking for that part of me that didn’t really get the spotlight when I came into who I was. The part of me that I didn’t really glorify. But after all that mushy shit, I just want to have fun with that side of me. The more masculine, country, and wild guy that just wants to have a beer and do nothing important in life.

I just want to have some fun and be young while I am. I did my work in making myself, now it’s my time to be wild and free. I feel like we all deserve that once in a while. But to everyone, here’s to a great 2018.

One can hope that everyone gets the year that they truly deserve. To my loved ones, I wish them happiness and positivity. To myself, I wish a year of self-reflection, and to continue the happiness I had worked for in 2017. All I can say now is, here we go!