Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!
If you knew me waaaaay back in 2016, you would remember that I used to carry around this hardcover pink journal everywhere I went. I carried it to school, my partner’s place, my grandparent’s house in Pennsylvania, my aunt’s house in Jersey; pretty much everywhere that I went. I didn’t get to keep one in 2017, but I started it back up this year. Of course, nothing beats the original, and this daily journal is honestly one of the reasons why 2016 was such a great year for me. If you’ll like to read about some of my reasoning on why journaling is a great thing to do, you can read my post about the Pros of Journaling here!
With that being said, I figured we do something fun for this week’s #TBT! How about we go through three of my journal entries right here, right now?
So, one of the major highlights of my 2016 year was that I was taking Acting II with some really awesome people. A lot of them were previously in my first acting class that prior semester, but I got to get to know a great group of people. Although I’d known Tori from the previous acting class, we didn’t get close until we took the second acting course, and I’m really glad we did! Regarding this post, our class assignment for the week was that we had to go on the subway and start a conversation with someone. Jed, our acting professor, pretty much told us he could tell when someone was lying about their encounter, so we shouldn’t try to lie out of this assignment. A couple of us decided to go on this adventure together, so each of us would go on a separate cart, and then switch off if we didn’t find or start a convo. My convo was with this woman who had awesome purple hair, so it was a scary, yet fun assignment to have!
Now, it wouldn’t be a drama course if there wasn’t no real-life drama. Although we all did get along in the class, there were moments where I spot some suspect stuff, and I honestly believe it was that one convo with Tori that made me realize that I wasn’t the only one to spot it. At that point, Tori and I were becoming good friends, and two years later, we still remain very close friends! If you’d like to follow her artist page (because she’s a dope artist), you can find her stuff on her Instagram page!
I still very much remember this day, and to this day I still talk about this day with him. I’ve known my partner for almost a decade (it’ll be nine years in October), so we have a pretty good understanding of each other. Although we have more of these conversations now that we are older, back then we would have them whether they would come up. On this day, we were just sitting on his bed just talking. I honestly remember hearing nothing around me besides the sound of his voice. It was quiet, it was personal, it was sincere, and the moment was cherishable. During this time, he was going through his first year at the school he was working at, I had just graduated with my bachelor’s degree, and we were both experiencing a path where “it felt like a roller coaster”, as he described it in the conversation.
I personally love him talking about things that make him passionate and that interest him. We have such different taste in almost everything, so learning about his beliefs and his interests really inspired me and made me feel like I was getting to know him all over again. Sometimes when you see yourself being so different from a person, you forget that the simplest things, the things that pretty much make-up everyone’s core, is what connects you to a person. Although I can go on all day about the reasons I love him, thinking about this day reminds me so much of why. We stan a man with ambition and drive!
I wrote this post in the gist of being all on my period when I dream the absolute most and being in the middle of my first semester as a grad student. I still very much remember this dream. I was doing a Broadway show at the time, and I had met a group of people at this meet and greet thing (I swore I was poppin’ in my dream, y’all) and the people who I’ve held grudges with for years were at that meet and greet. I wasn’t taken back, I wasn’t shocked, I treated them like actual human beings. I wasn’t scared for them to see me being the person I was and when I woke up, I did wake up feeling lighter than usual. In real life, the people who I’ve held grudges with are people I instantly cut out of my life, and to an extent pretend that they never existed. That morning when I woke up, I realize just how human these people are too, and for once I thought, “I hope these people are doing well in their lives, wherever they may be.” I honestly believe to this day that I wouldn’t have made that revelation if it wasn’t me being so connected to my thoughts and feelings through that journal that year.
Although these are just three random entries in my journal, reading back to some of the most personal ones makes me remember almost every detail on that exact day. That’s exactly why I wanted to daily journal in the first place; initially, I wanted to read each day on it’s respected day in 2017 (kind of like an “on this day” Facebook thing but for journaling) and see where I was at that time a year prior. Although that never happened, I still very much like to read back and see how things were at a certain point in my life in 2016! Although I’m doing my 2018 slightly different, daily journaling always brings this therapeutic vibe after a long day of whatever happens.
Maybe at the end of the year, we’ll go back on some 2018 posts, yeah? 😉
-Liz. (:
Letters From Liz. 