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I hope that things can get better in the world, and even if things don’t get better, that we can get through it anyway.

I hope that I can do better in the future than I have in the past.

I have hope in Jesus Christ that this life isn’t the end of existence and that there is the ability to change, repent, and return to live with a loving Heavenly Father.

I have hope that happy times are ahead, and that I can be able to learn and grow stronger.

I hope I can make a difference in the lives of others and make the world a better place.

I’ve been journaling (almost) every day for years now. Here are some things I’ve learned:

• Don’t worry about the quality of writing. Just stick something down.
• I like going back and filling in any days that I missed instead of just trying to do it every day without fail.
• I write many different types of entries. Some are short records of what happened. Sometimes it’s more about how I feel. Sometimes it is long and rambling about everything I have in my mind. Sometimes it’s more focused on people around me. Sometimes it’s about my goals and dreams.
• Realize the purpose of the journal: my journal is more about the act of journaling than making a finished product. Most of it I don’t think anyone will ever read again. But I also enjoy it if I need to reference something or I want to remember about what happened years ago. My journal is a product for me, not for anyone else.
• Sometimes, I use it as a way to record stories and to record the Lord’s hand in my life. Those are what I would like to journal about all the time, but I’m okay if it only happens on occasion and most of my journal is just lists and whatever small thing is on my mind.
• I type my journal on the computer. I don’t like writing on paper, so this just makes it easier for me.

How do you journal? What works for you? What is difficult for you?

We were hiking and the kids had climbed up this slab of granite and we told them to come down so we could keep going. We started to get going again, but as my little girl ran to join us, she went faster than her feet and fell forward onto the ground.

She cried and cried and she hurt. Her hands hurt and her feelings hurt and she was covered in dust. She kept crying for a long time as I picked her up and hiked onward.

How could I help her calm down? I thought if she could just get her breath for a moment, she would be able to move forward and be okay.

So in a desperate moment of trying to get my daughter to breathe instead of wail, I held up a few fingers and asked her to blow the candles out, pretending that my fingers were the candles.

When she blew on my fingers, I put them down. And we did it again with a different amount of fingers. She calmed down and she started breathing again, and became a very enjoyable game.

I took about two weeks off of social media, and I logged back on to see a whole bunch of pictures people had shared of family reunions and life events.

And I remembered that when I was young, we didn’t take pictures to share immediately with other people. We took pictures to remember things. The only people who saw the pictures of our family vacations were our family.

I don’t think anything is necessarily wrong with sharing photos. It can be nice to see what people we love are doing with their lives.

But there have conversation where I’ve seen something on social media or someone else has seen something on social media, and it’s disappointing that we can’t share more genuinely. I get more pleasure telling a story about my life to a person than I do putting it out there on social media where the people I love may or may not see it.

I don’t know if I benefited much from seeing other people’s photographs. I would rather be with people and talk to people and interact with them.

• Doctor Who
• Sherlock
• Star Trek
• Amazing Race
• Great British Bake-off
• Psych
• Dick van Dyke Show
• WandaVision and Loki
• Parks and Recreation
• Superman and Lois
• Lois and Clark
• I Dream of Jeannie

This list doesn’t include everything; just what I can think of right now. What are your favorite TV shows?

I blocked Google searches on my computer so that I have to go and enter a password if I want to search for anything. I realized that I was spending a lot of time sitting and searching for whatever random question came into my mind. Sometimes I don’t need answers.

Yes. Because a lot of the things we pursue don’t really matter that much after all.

I don’t give up on family; I don’t give up on people. I don’t give up on myself becoming the best version that I can be.

But I start a lot of projects, and I’ve quit and given up on lots of them and it was for the best.

In ninth grade, I sat on the bench of the ninth grade team. I didn’t quit that team because I wasn’t supposed to quit–but sometimes I wonder if it would have been better if I had just walked out and done something better with my time. I never played on a basketball team after that bad experience, but that worked out really well for me, as the girl’s basketball team in my high school was plagued with drama and problems.

There are the wrong reasons to quit, like being afraid or being lazy. But there are good reasons to let go of something: sometimes dreams are impossible or messy or ugly, and we need to protect ourselves and the ones we love.

When we start something, we don’t always know what’s going to happen, and when we find out more information or things go wrong, it can be good to get to a better place.