A little while back, I was going through some old word documents on my computer. There was no real reason why I was looking through everything, but I did get a lot of nostalgia from looking through my thoughts as a high schooler again. I found a long-forgotten folder in the deep recesses of my desktop that was a creative writing folder, and I think I found a little pot of gold in that folder.

It wasn't filled with anything crazy, but it was filled with the thoughts, the hopes, and the dreams that sixteen-year-old me had in mind for the twenty-to-thirty-something-year-old me. There are poems and "word vomits", as my teachers liked to call them, and a whole bunch of random journal entries from a digital journal long-forgotten. I read through every document I could find and I spent a good hour and a half doing so.

When I was sixteen, I was depressed and lonely. I felt extremely defeated and downtrodden due to the circumstances I was in. The one way I knew how to get my feelings out the best I could was to write everything down. Looking through it all over again, I feel everything the sixteen-year-old me felt again.

I made promises to myself in those writings. I promised to find good friends. I promised to be happier. I promised myself that I would find my footing and I promised that I would venture out into the real world, ready for adventure and for life's curveballs. I wrote so many promises and wishes down in those files. In almost five years since writing those down, I've already checked off some of those boxes. Now I can continue and try and finish off the list.

Since reading through everything, it's inspired me to revisit more creative writing. I remember having taken out chunks of time out of my day to write down whatever I was feeling in any particular moment, and I'm starting to realize that it's something I want to do again. Now as a twenty-year-old, I'll start making promises to my thirty-to-forty-something-year-old self.