Goodbye? Hello? New Start? Let's Talk.

Hey guys. It has been quite a while since I have been here. I have had a very busy schedule and quite a lot of events have happened in my past few months of life, in which I have not been particularly sharing with you on the Internet and within this website. I hope you can respect that some of it I must keep to myself, and would not wish to share with you at this point in time. The last few months, nevertheless, have definitely allowed me to grow. I turned sixteen a couple of months ago. There's one thing that definitely allowed for change in my life.

It's not like I had expected to take a break without notice from this blog. The weeks just eventually crept away from me, and honestly I could see that me being inconsistent with my posting was bound to have happened at any given point during this year. I never even got to finish all of my year-end posts for 2017. However, many of you have been checking back regularly since my last post back in February. You managed to give me about 20,000 extra views since then. I thank you immensely for that. Truthfully though, I definitely felt like the long period of time in which I stopped posting on this website was somehow very beneficial. Also, I knew that all of the work I had for school was going to catch up to my free time. Obviously school comes before this, as much as I love reviewing music. I obviously value school very much and work as hard as I can. Last week, my school held our annual Academic Awards Ceremony, and I was named Most Outstanding Student in all four of my core subject areas, my Spanish Class, earned a Scholar Athlete Award; as I also participated on the Tennis Team this spring, a research award for a history competition in which I participated in and made it to the New York State finals, as well as earning the title of Most Outstanding Male Student in my grade and an award for being on the High Honor Roll every quarter. I was immensely proud of my accomplishments. None of this means that I never forgot about this along the way. I still kept writing charts for my other blog, kept listening to the Sirius XM Hits 1 Weekend Countdown, and still read all of your blog posts (without commenting, as I wanted a break from all of this in some way). 

I don't know if you completely missed my reviews, as you could definitely have received other opinions due to the massive amount of blogs pertaining to the same topics in this community. I began to think that I really was going to just have to say goodbye, as there were things in my life that were more important, truthfully, than this. And I love this SOOOOO much. I love music SOOOOO much. Family, friends, school, it all has to come before my free time when I can post these. 

I just got out of school for summer vacation yesterday, and I realized that I should probably make a post on here. I haven't talked to you guys in a while. I'm not sure if many of you are still here after my long string of absence, but if you still are, I am here. Please comment below, I want to hear from you. Please, please, please comment. Let me know you're still hear. I am definitely going to reply.

Anyways, I am going to cut to the chase. What I want for this blog for this summer, until September, when I go back for my junior year, is to post as much as I can. I am not necessarily going to review the countdown all the time. I might be doing album reviews, song reviews, and other cool things like that. I also have summer homework (yes I know that is crazy), too. So, I still will have occupied time, but a little more free time to spend on here. However, when school starts back up in September, I am going to have a pretty busy year. I am going to be taking two AP classes, a college class, and an honors class. It's going to be pretty strenuous. I also want sleep. I will try to post as much as I can on the weekends, when I can, and only if I can. I hope you understand and respect that. This blog will probably no longer be completely Hits 1 focused. As for my other, less-popular blog, I probably will not be posting on there anymore, but I really haven't decided on that yet. I'll keep you posted. 

In all, that's all I have to really say right now. Comment below, let me know you're still here. I want to talk to you guys. Keep reading. I'll keep you updated when new posts come out. I look forward to what summer holds.

-Jack :)