I'm a writer. That much is a given, considering that you're reading this right now; but aside from these blog-like articles on Odyssey, my passion is storytelling. This passion entails everything from my own original, fictional works to adaptions, or interpretations of true stories. If there's a significant idea that enters my brain, I want to give it life.

As a storyteller, I'm constantly searching for inspiration. When I was younger, I looked to some of my favorite films and books for said inspiration but as I got older, I found that this approach led to nothing more than imitation. Now don't get me wrong, everything is imitated nowadays to a certain extent. The key to originality in this era is not whether or not your story has been told before because it has it's how you tell it. Can you take your influences (i.e., your favorite films and books) and combine them with your own worldview in order to make your work personal? While we all learned to speak from listening to others who spoke before us, our individual voices are truly unique.

This epiphany left my creative brain in a daze, to say the least. After all, it's easy to say all voices are individual and unique; however, that means that one must figure out what their own voice sounds like. Anyone who's creative knows that this is no easy task, and it often takes a lot of searching to find what you're looking for. Not only that but many (like myself) will find that their voice is constantly evolving throughout the years.

So where is one to look when searching for their own voice? As the old saying goes, sometimes the answer is sitting right on your back porch. Indeed, by looking at my home, I've started to figure out my own voice in the past year. This isn't a piece about my creative voice, though; and with that mention of home, allow me to transition into what I'm really writing about.

I often hear people in my hometown complain about how boring it is where we're from. To be fair, I'm just as guilty of making similar comments. And yes, I am from a small town with not too much to do outside of going to a restaurant with friends or a movie. Still, though, I find myself asking if it's really as bad as some people claim?

When I really think about it, there isn't anywhere I'd rather be from than my home town or at least somewhere similar. While the small town streets don't necessarily offer a ton of options for weekend venues, it does have its pros. For example, while your hometown may lack many popular franchises, it probably has a plethora of local attractions to choose from. My hometown doesn't have a Red Robin, and I wish it did because I love Red Robin; even so, I would never trade our local burger stand CF Penn's for a Red Robin.

One might also consider that, in a small town, it's easy to know and be known. My family owns a couple of local businesses in town, and so I'm constantly being asked by people if I'm the son of my father with those people obviously mentioning him by name, and not referring to him as "my father". Not to mention, I also have a fairly large family full of aunts, uncles, and cousins; so rest assured, if someone doesn't know my dad, they know someone else in my family. With this big connection to my community through my family, it's been easy for me to grow up feeling at home. There has never been a time in my life that I didn't feel welcome in my hometown by the people around me that I probably knew. As I've grown up and traveled a bit more, I've come to find that such comfort is fairly uncommon.

Last, but certainly not least, what you often find in a small town is a unique culture. I know that speaking for the hometown, people not from here come in and say they've never been anywhere like it. I'm sure the same thing happens in other small towns across the nation. Being small allows you to have a very distinct identity, and that's really cool if you ask me. It's sort of like storytelling; nothing is original, obviously, but it's the voice of your town that's communicated through the people that are unique.

I could go on, but I say all this to say that, while it sometimes may run a bit slower than others, my town is a great town. When's the last time you or I reflected on our roots and were truly thankful? When's the last time that we compared the positives of our town to others, and not just the negatives? These are things to ponder because life is what you make it wherever you go. One could just as easily find reasons to hate living in Mayberry as they could New York City. It's all a matter of how you look at it; and I'd rather fall in love with my home than spend my life longing for some apparently better paradise that, in all honesty, probably doesn't exist on this earth.