After being invited by Chevy to attend the Nashville Auto Show last weekend, you and I made the nearly one hour drive from our new home in Spring Hill to downtown Nashville.
I think one of your favorite vehicles to check out was the City Express. But of course, you went crazy over the Corvette; as did I.
You also enjoyed playing a dice game at the Geico booth and getting your picture made with the big gecko.
Of course, there’s no denying that perhaps your favorite part was running and jumping through the new Music City Center where the event took place.
When you and I hang out together, I always find way to help you run wild and burn off “little boy energy” in the process.
You got quite a thrill out of jumping off 4 stairs at a time. You truly are Jumping Jack Flash!
We also explored downtown Nashville a little bit.
You commented that the people riding the peddle trolleys were “too loud.”
Granted, that’s what many tourists do when they come here. They drink beer at 10:47 in the morning while shouting the lyrics to Walk the Moon’s “Shut Up and Dance”, as they ride the peddle trolleys downtown.
A stranger offered to take our picture together with the “Batman Building” in the background.
And I took your picture with the year 2010 engraved on the sidewalk, which is the year you were born.
I’m glad Chevy reached out to us about the Nashville Auto Show. By us going there, it provided good quality father and son time for us.
We can make an adventure out of anything. We can make a road trip out of a one hour commute to downtown Nashville to look at new cars and then run around the new Music City Center.
Next month makes 4 years since my family has been involved with Chevrolet. Back in December 2011, we drove a Chevy Volt from Naples to Key West, Florida. They’ve flown me up to Detroit a few times as well. And this past summer, they let us drive a 2015 Colorado to go see our nephew graduate boot camp in Montgomery, Alabama.
This week Chevy invited me to the Nashville Auto Show, to check out their new 2016 vehicles. I particular enjoyed getting to sit in the 2016 Corvette… but what guy wouldn’t?
I’ll be going there with my son tomorrow so he can see all the cars. But as for today, I had the whole place to myself.
With the way Nashville traffic works, I knew that if I didn’t leave super early, I’d get there fairly late. So I was able to take pictures of the vehicles, in order to share them with anyone out there on the Internet who is such a Chevy fan they wanted to catch a peak of the new line-up.
So here’s your sneak peak:
2016 Corvette
2016 Chevy Silverado
2016 Chevy Malibu LT
2016 Chevy Impala
2016 Chevy Spark
2016 Chevy Sonic
2016 Chevy Volt
2016 Chevy Traverse LTZ
2016 Chevy Equinox LTZ
2016 Chevy Malibu 2.0 T
2016 Chevy Camaro
2016 Chevy Colorado
2016 Chevy City Express
2016 Chevy Tahoe
2016 Chevy Silverado
2016 Chevy Suburban
Thanks for taking a look at all these pictures I took of the 2016 Chevy lineup. Time (and statistics) will tell whether a post like this does well.
I just thought it might be a decent place for car enthusiasts to be able to catch some glimpses of the new Chevy lineup all in one place.
After seeing the City Express, it makes me sort of wish Chevy would turn this into a family friendly vehicle; kind of like a cross behind a small SUV and an updated minivan. That’s basically what it seems to me anyway; and I like it.
Last night I finished the 1989 movie, Back to the Future Part 2, which takes place in the future: October 2015.
I suppose now that I’m officially living in the future, it’s quite appropriate that I announce that as of last night at 9:01 PM, I am now a smart phone owner.
That makes me the last cool person you know to finally get a smart phone.
At this point, who do you know who doesn’t have one? I literally don’t know anyone in my social circle who doesn’t have a smart phone.
In fact, it’s not unheard of here in the Nashville area to see a homeless man selling newspapers to people stopped at the red lights, but then to see him check his smart phone during the green lights when the cars are no longer stopped in front of him.
I’m not sure how that all works out, but obviously, it only proves how counter-cultural my own lack of a smart phone has made me up until now.
Here’s the truth: I kind of hate smart phones. Actually, if it were up to me (it’s not- it’s up to my wife), I wouldn’t own a cell phone at all.
Sure, it’s ironic that a blogger with a YouTube channel doesn’t like the idea of always being “connected and plugged in”.
It’s just that I refuse to become another cliché who looks down at my phone to acknowledge another Facebook “like” while you are trying to talk to me, face to face in real time. It’s perhaps my rebellion of that cliche that keeps from wanting to be so connected and plugged in.
After all, a guy I recently met at Whole Foods, Jarrid Wilson, did a blog post that went viral; which addresses this social issue: “Why I Am Getting a Divorce in 2014.”
He’s actually talking about “divorcing” his smart phone.
See, that’s the whole point. I despise the concept of naturally and gradually disconnecting from real life via a smart phone, allowing myself to believe the illusion that what’s going on in my Facebook feed is more important than my family right in front of me.
It reminds me of the 1980 Genesis song, “Turn It on Again”. The protagonist of the song watches TV so much that he begins to get lonely when the characters of his favorite shows aren’t on. I see a parallel with people who constantly check and update social media, via their smart phones:
“I can show you some of the people in my life
It’s driving me mad just another way of passing the day
I, I get so lonely when she’s not there
Turn it on, turn it on, turn it on again
Turn it on, turn it on, turn it on again
I can see another face”
Someone on my Facebook page for Family Friendly Daddy Blog immediately asked me last night, after I posted my 1st official Instagram post (featured below), what made me decide to finally get a smart phone.
Here’s my answer:
After being with Verizon for at least a dozen years, things finally got to the point with where they no longer offered incentives to faithful customers like me to stay; customers who always paid on time; no more free phones, for sure. Those days are gone.
I even walked in to my Verizon store to calmly explain I would be leaving them if they couldn’t provide me a free “dumb phone” to keep my budget the same; since I was nearing the end of my latest 2 year contract.
Verizon sincerely yet simply apologized they could not. I tried.
This time around, it was going to cost just as much to have “regular service” with them, as it would to finally just get a smart phone.
So now my wife and I are with a hilariously named service provider called Puppy Wireless; which is basically a 3rd party that uses Verizon’s towers.
Here’s the one and only part of being a smart phone owner that excites me:
There’s a good chance I can grow my “blog business” because of it.
I now have access to Instagram, which means I am more attractive to Acorn, an influence company I have worked with a little on the side.
For example, I did a project for them earlier in the summer in which I promoted the mobile app game, Best Fiends, by featuring the product in a Jack-Man video I made, in lieu of an Instagram post.
With my Instagram account @nickshellwrites, which is the same as my Twitter handle, I am pretty sure I will find myself with a much steadier stream of blogging gigs through Acorn, which pays me to advertise for their clients.
Also with that in the pipeline, my YouTube channel has finally begun to start making me some money. Plus, in the near future, I will be featuring ads on my blog for Beacon Ads; a Christian company who found my “family friendly” daddy blog to be appropriate for their advertisers.
Over this next year, I am going to really be making a much more conscious effort to make my blog more of a business; not just a hobby.
And as much as I don’t want to admit it, a smart phone can be a great tool to help make that happen.
One of the main reasons I refused to get a smart phone all this time is because I refused to change my budget over it. But if I can make up the financial loss of having to pay for a data plan, not to mention my phone, I suppose it’s worth it if it also leads to me actually making money.
I am a bitter, cheap, old man. I just happen to only be 34 years old.
Sure, I have a smart phone now… but that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.
On September 11, 2005, I drove my 1994 Oldsmobile Cutlass to Nashville, Tennessee. (My blog was only a month old at that point.)
For the next several months, I would share half of an old duplex that smelled like old church cabinets, with a guy I barely knew. My job would be to load and unload trucks at Fed-Ex, while working with many men who, in hindsight, showed signs of drug use.
Every lunch and every dinner was the $1.99 tuna or meatball sub at Subway.
And I didn’t know anyone there in Nashville; I started from complete scratch.
The goal was to make my musical career happen here in the music capitol of the world.
That long haired 24 year-old version of me was very determined. Within a few months, I landed my first real job, at a trucking company, where I still work today, helping truck drivers financially manage their income.
But that version of me was also very inexperienced in life. I might even say that I was more optimistic back then.
Simply put, my inexperience of life allowed me to be more optimistic.
Now a decade later, with a wife and a son, I have become experienced in life.
I learned how to rise to the management level in my office. I learned how to manage money in my household. I learned how to be a helpful and supportive husband. I learned how to be a patient and creative dad.
And I learned these things the hard way. I don’t suppose most people really learn those things the easy way- is there any easy yet effective way to learn those things?
Over the years, I traded in my optimism for positive realism.
I learned to indulge in constructive criticism and to keep myself from being “offended” by other people.
Something else I learned pretty quickly is that if I ever began to believe I was “the victim,” then I definitely was.
Let me be clear, I am not the victim. I instead am built to find ways around the problem.
So if these are all things I learned, then who taught them to me?
I did.
One of my constant goals, since I’ve been a kid, has been to make sure that I am more mature in each passing year.
I am ashamed that just 2 years and a half years ago I broadcasted my vegan conversion over Facebook, displaying Internet memes that reflected my personal beliefs, yet stepped on a lot of people’s toes in the process.
That is so not me anymore.
It was a humbling (and privately, humiliating) experience and process for me; to realize A) that my feelings and opinions caused a rift with people who knew me and B) that my feelings and opinions are ultimately irrelevant in the scheme of reality outside my head.
I needed that shock to my system. It got my attention.
From there, I stopped stating my opinions, feelings, and beliefs over social media; instead, eventually channeling my creative energy into making my own YouTube videos that I intertwine into my blog.
Not to mention, I am also able to implement my own music into my videos.
I’m at a good place in life. But I had to learn a lot of this stuff the hard way.
Had I simply maintained my own selfish attitude at any point along the way, I couldn’t have made it here.
So from here, I expect to learn more lessons the hard way; which is again how it seems to work.
Granted, the experience I’ve gained now will greatly prevent much future drama in my life.
More challenges will come. They will make me less selfish, more giving, and more mature.
It’s almost funny to think that some of the things I now appreciate most in life are learning to become less selfish, more giving, and therefore, more mature.
That’s what can happen to somebody a decade into the future.
While we were in California last month for our official annual family vacation, Grandma (Mommy’s Mommy) began making a quilt from your t-shirts, including one also of Mommy’s that she wore while you were just a baby.
Grandma finished it last week and it arrived in the mail for you to enjoy. You’ve slept with it every night since then.
You and Mommy had off school and work on Friday so Mommy took you to the Pfunky Griddle in Nashville; a place we would frequent back when you were much younger and we lived closer to that side of the city.
As you can see from these pictures, you were very happy to be there! You got to make your very own chocolate chip pancakes, right there at the table.
It’s one of those quirky Nashville restaurants that tourists should definitely check out while visiting here. Lucky for you, the car ride there wasn’t all that long.
Friday night after I got off work, we drove to Alabama to visit my side of the family.
Amazingly, we didn’t shoot any videos, as I’m still finishing up our Family in a Camry series.
However, using my tripod and self-timer, I took a few “practice portraits” of our family. I say that because next month when we visit them again, I’ll be taking our official “matching ages” pictures, in which Mommy and I will be 34 years old, Aunt Dana and Uncle Andrew will be 31, you and your cousin Calla will both be 4, and so on…
What I learned from taking this practice portrait is that next time I need to zoom in after I take each photo to be sure everyone is looking at the camera.
I didn’t notice until the next day after we left, that you were looking in the wrong direction.
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