I rang in the new year at Fire in the Sky III, an Incendia event. It was much more moist than I’d have liked my New Year’s Eve to be, but it was still pretty awesome.  

The year 2016 is behind us now. While what happened in your personal life is going to heavily influence how you feel about the year, among most of my social circle you’d think it had a consciousness aggressively trying to destroy all that they love. I admit that like many other I found it disheartening that an icon representing the worst of power’s corruption was elected to the highest position in the United States of America and that many of my childhood heroes died off. I’m sure other things happened in the world, but Trump and dead celebrities was pretty much all anyone was talking about in my monkeysphere as far as current events went during the last days of 2016.  

On a personal level, 2016 served me several helpings of shit, but didn’t force as much of it down my throat as 2015 did and unlike that year it gave me a few good things to wash it down with. It was still a pretty rough year on me, but I was able to find enough footing to start pushing back against the darkness that had overtaken my life the last few years.  Instead of just struggling to survive, I managed to start living my life again, with creating this blog being one of the byproducts of that.

In 2017, it is my intention to put more time and energy into Discerning Deviant than ever before. Launching it right before the holiday season and not having time to really get into a groove with creating content for the site before two highly distracting and draining months of major holidays made it difficult for me to prioritize working on the site.  Now that the holiday madness is behind me, especially since I have patrons to answer to now, I am committed to giving Discerning Deviant the time and attention it needs to evolve into what I dream of it being someday.

I’m very excited about the potential that 2017 holds for me, even though I know it’s going to be a lot of hard work to reach the heights that I am aiming for. I hope that everyone else has something they are passionate about as well and that things come together for achieving whatever goals you have for the year and beyond.

In the meantime, thanks for reading Discerning Deviant. It’s only going to get better from here.

(Discerning Deviant is supported entirely through reader sponsorship via the Discerning Deviant Patreon.)