If 2019 was the year of my existential crisis (realizing I had reached all my life goals before the age of 40 and having to recalibrate my identity accordingly), then it feels like 2020 is going to be the year of me learning to accept that I have already lived the first half of my life.

Perhaps the biggest epiphany I’ve had about it so far is this:

I spent the first 38 years of my life looking back in nostalgia, foolishly convincing myself that somehow, one day, I will be able to return to the good ole days.

But I will spend the next 38 years aware that right now, we’re actually living in the good ole days that we will look back on and wish we could return to.

These are the good ole days. We’re still living in them.

The only possible way to return to previous good ole days is to spend time with people and share memories of those exclusive events you lived through together.

I think the default in the human experience is to fail to recognize it’s harder to recognize the good ole days while we are still in them, because we are always also balancing out the mundane and negative events happening alongside the good things.

In reality though, looking back, we tend to remember the good memories more than the others. Those good times serve as the thumbnails for our past.

That’s why I felt it was important to write my newest song, “These are the Good Days”.

It is a reminder to make the most of life while we still are alive; focusing on the good things, which are often overshadowed by the mundane and the negative.

You can hear my new song below:

All words and music by Nick Shell:

My life is half way over, my life has never been more in focus

No time machine to take us all back, what’s happened is stuck in the past

These are the good ole days, we’re still living in them

I won’t always be here, you won’t always be here

So shake a hand, shake a leg, soon we’ll all be dead

Don’t want to die, so I’ll try to live while I’m alive

This is it, these are the good ole days

You learn to take the good with the bad things

Life is both a comedy and a tragedy

No way to fast-forward or rewind

Just try to catch up if you get behind