On January 1st of this year, I started journaling. Since then, I have managed to journal every single day and my black book is almost entirely filled up.

Most days I write about stupid things. “Today was bad. And that is all.” Some days I write ten pages about really, really important things. But I look back now and I’m just so happy I decided to keep track of this period of my life.

I’m not going to lie, it was a shitty fucking period of my life. But I can look back and say with a little bit of perspective, “That. That right there. That made me unhappy. I need to change that in my life.” or “Why can’t I do more of this? Those were the best weeks all year.” I look back at people that made me feel wonderful and worthwhile and people that did absolutely the opposite. I can look back at lists of books I wanted to read and places I wanted to go. I can look back at shitty nights where I was thinking horrible things and thank to god that I’m not thinking those same horrible things tonight.

So today when I sat down to journal, I made a list of everything that I need to do this summer to make sure that next school year is about a thousand times better than this last one.

It feels good to finally know what to do.