Welcome to 2017! The year where everyone will start fresh after the dumpster fire that was known as 2016. Nothing that happened in the past will affect you in 2017… because that’s how this works. 2017 is the year we all hit the reset button and pretend like nothing bad happened or will ever happen again.

Except Donald Trump (depending on your viewpoint), celebrity deaths, the ever-declining trust in the media, fake news, social media BS… and whatever else you may have hated in 2016.

Could we really just hit a reset button when the clock struck midnight on January 1st? I get that people use it as a way to clean their slate of all the crap that may have happened over the year and, in a way, start fresh but bad things are still going to happen. In fact, hitting reset is probably the last thing we should do after a year like 2016. As we should every year, we should learn and grow from what happened in the past year and use it to make us better people. That’s how real change happens in this country. You cannot pretend as if Trump never won the election; you need to take the opportunity to listen to the other side of the issues and find common ground. Our country is as divided as ever, it is important to hold 2016 sacred. Also, celebrities are still going to die it is just a fact of life.

Trust in media is at an all-time low and 2017 will be a very important year for journalists. In a time where fact-checking seems to have taken a back seat, how will journalism rise to the task? I’m not going to pretend like I have the answers. I don’t. However, in the ‘post-truth’ world we live in, how do we get the truth out in an effective way? That’s one thing I will definitely keep an eye on in 2017. 2016 was definitely a real crappy year for facts… I think everyone can agree on that. I will be keep a close eye on it here on CFDD.

Also, hopefully that absolute crap that I see on Facebook on a daily basis will cease to exist in 2017… a guy can dream.. right?

Yes, it will forever be known as a crappy year. Let’s turn the crap into something that doesn’t stink as much.

That’s my little diatribe on the year ahead: staying positive. We all need to stay positive. I know I do.

2016 was a very weird year for me. Stress was at an all-time high, health was at an all-time low at times and it seemed like nothing rolled my way and I think it had a great impact on those around me as well. Toward the end of the year, I started changing my mentality about a lot of things and it has had a profound impact on how I live my life. Writing has also helped me out drastically. 2017 is the year I build on those gains and become a better individual.

Cheap Five Dollar Dress will continue with posts throughout each week. Yeah, I know it started as a “hey, I’m going to do a new post every day” kind of thing. I really thought that I had the time and mental toughness to get that done. Turns out it takes more time to churns these out than I thought. Between research, reading and writing, each post ends up taking a good 2-3 hours to get published. That’s a lot of time for someone with a schedule like mine. So the plan is to have 3 posts per week (hopefully on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule.)

I love writing in the style that I do here on my blog because… well… I can write the way I want. Remember the days of MLA and formatting and paragraph structure? That stuff was BS when you learned it in school because you hardly (if ever) use it in real life. Yes, there are guidelines when you write for certain things to make sure you stuff doesn’t suck… but when was the last time you used MLA for anything?? I hope to continue writing on here for a very long time. I don’t really care about how many people come and read every day. This is really just something for me to have fun with and do what I want to do.

Looking ahead to this week, I’ll start my normal thing on Wednesday and on Friday I may write about my experience with my new Apple Watch. We’ll see how that turns out. If I don’t like how that is looking, I’ll definitely have something else lined up.

Here’s to a 2017 that we will not soon forget. I hope you set off to attain your personal goals for the year. I know I will. Make 2017 YOUR year where you make it happen.