Two months since my last post. On my two year anniversary of the website (March 5th), I spent an entire weekend reliving my first two years. Clearly, I learned more in my second year than I did in my first. My first year was nothing more than building a website and going to school, the second year was getting into my first barbershop and the lessons I learned from that. A weekend of going through every lesson that I've learned, and taking a hard look at the scenario I am in. I later edited the post to exclude certain parts of the story and I subsequently created a second post focusing on just my time in the shop downtown. Even though I poured hours into the articles, I didn't post either one.

To comfortably put the opinion of my second year into proper perspective, I will say this much. There are lessons to be learned, and I'm more of the man I hope to become today largely in part of the lessons I learned downtown, but my experiences prior to entering this industry warn me that the timing of those posts would be entirely inappropriate. Barbering is a blossoming industry, and Boise is growing just as rapidly. I'm going to make every attempt to stay above reproach by avoiding unnecessary professional feuds, and right now the things that I have to say are not in a positive light. I believe that the treasure valley community is large enough that different personalities have more than enough room to co-exist and flourish without feeling like they are on top of their competition. Quite honestly, I don't want to be the personal barber to a quarter million men, and I don't know which barbers out there wish the same. There are two mentalities that I've discovered in this industry. Those who believe there is enough to go around, and those who believe others are trying to take what is theirs. I believe there is enough to go around, and if I keep my head up and past drama, be the genuine human I am then I will attract the group of individuals from that quarter million population that will be excited to have me be the one that takes care of their needs.

I will be me. You will be you.

That is the main lesson that I will take from the second year, but as far as the past two months, I'm been focusing on another thing I find important.

Work/Life balance. When you run and do everything, it is very hard to find time to make sure you are mentally relaxed and recouped for time with clients. I have the luxury of not being needed when I don't have appointments, so I spend more time at home with my dogs and my wife. I discover projects to get excited about, and I have a back library of netflix and xbox games that keep my time in between appointments. It's little things, but knowing that I can take time for myself makes me separate myself from the salon. When I'm there, I'm there to work and I'm 100% there, and when it's time for me to have fun, I don't distract myself by worrying about what's going on in the salon.

I also celebrated my quarter anniversary with Hailie. We've decided that since we got married on leap day, every year until our next real anniversary will be either a quarter, half, or three-fourths anniversary. For our first quarter, we went back out with Janine to recreate some pictures from a year prior.