I have been writing in a journal on an almost-daily basis since I was 17 years old. This is a record of me going through each entry from the beginning, and commenting on the me from fifteen years ago.

I get a kick out of being nice. I find it’s a habit that builds on itself and brings back niceness in return. I like to be silly self, saying the stupid things that come into my mind, but it only gets you so far. I like saying the things which bear heavy on my soul, but I fear they will cause my worry. I like being under stress, it’s the only way I get anything done. I like being alive, being me, even though I hate this non-Utopian, tortured existence I have been forced into. I like the way how life’s funny like that.

Is it just me, or did this entry take a weird turn two-thirds of the way through? Like it started off as a normal entry then suddenly I decided to turn it into poetry. God how I hate my poetry attempts. Anyway, the thing I start out with, about getting a kick out of being nice, I like that. I think when you’re young, in an effort to rebel and show your affect on the world, you do your best to repel people (or at least I did), and then justify it by saying only your friends were able to see the real you. In reality, it’s very easy to scare people off. It’s much harder to be genuinely nice and have people genuinely like you.