I’ve opened up a blank page.

I’ve scrolled through Facebook.

I’ve returned to the blank page.

I’ve scrolled through Instagram.

I’m feeling uninspired. So I suppose that means I just write without thinking about an agenda of where I want to go and what I want to write.

When I journal, this usually takes me in directions that are surprising and hard and helpful. With a blog, it’s a bit strange knowing I’ll press “publish” at the end. It’s hard not to curate my words a bit more, to worry about if what I’m writing makes sense. But I suppose that’s why I picked the blog medium as the choice for my daily writing exercise. It’s a certain “thing” that is measurable whether or not it happens, it holds me accountable, it puts me out of my comfort zone by sharing, but it’s also flexible enough to allow me freedom to write about whatever I want, really—be it fiction, running, politics, random musings, whatever.

I don’t know exactly why I decided to start writing once per day. I’ve spent months, maybe my entire post-high school life, really, wanting to write more even if I don’t have “something” to write. When I was packing to move in February, I came across old journals from high school and realized how much writing helped me process things, and I also read about how I spent time just writing outside of schoolwork. I’ve been thinking about the space the writing gave me in my head, the release it gave me, the escape. Maybe I decided that I just needed to start. And that every day is actually easier than once a week—I can’t put it off until the week is over and then shrug and say “well, maybe next week.”

The stories I wrote in high school seemed to be about girls I wished I was, lives I wished I had. It was truly a way to write a different life—something I suppose we all think about at age 16.

But now… I’m writing about my own life and the person I am. This isn’t an escape. It is a submersion into my own world instead of a journey into someone else’s.