Do you see that person at the top of the page to your left? Yeah, she doesn't know what to do with her hands. She struggles to maintain a persona that everything is okay all the time. Sometimes she feels like she can't keep up with what society's pressures place on her along with her carefully selected portions that she has on her plate in daily life.

This year she's been wrestling with comparing her success with where everyone else is in life. And it's been extra tricky for her because she's never been in this position before — a young adult who is stuck between stages where there is no longer a structured expectation for where she should go next on her own. And because there is no right answer, she's been especially focused on looking around her in order to try and determine what is right and what is wrong.

Because while she feels like she has the world at her fingertips, it is hard for her not to wonder whether or not her path is being pursued in the right order so that she can keep the right fit in every aspect of her life. The uncertainty has been slowly eating away at her hope for where she sees herself in the future.

This year she's had to overcome the hurdle of recognizing that the order of events is not what matters, it's the heart behind the cause. The person behind the actions that require effort. The passion behind her intentions for implementing changes.

Yeah, you got it! That's me — I have been referring to myself in the third person, and you've probably been cringing at that technique. But hey, I got your attention, didn't I? So now you know a little bit more about my journey this past year.

Throughout the transition of learning how to make decisions with little to no information and how to truly be able to accept that I'm responsible for everything that comes next, I had decided to rid myself of the app that I spent most of my time using.

It was more of a social experiment at first because I knew that I had an unhealthy connection to it in the first place--the constant checking to see if anybody had responded or opened my message, seeing someone's story and instantly yet unintentionally feeling left out, or just straight up analyzing whether I should post this or that in order to keep up with the excitement of everybody else's life.

It started out with me being able to delete my account for a couple of days, but then I would get it back ASAP because I "needed" to be in the loop. Then I was able to go about three weeks without even thinking about it until I found out that I at least needed to sign back into my account within the next week so it wouldn't delete my entire history and user profile.

But then something changed the next time around. I had an encounter that enabled me to come to terms with being able to move on--I hit the 'delete account' button and never looked back until Snapchat reminded me that I had one day to renew my account or I would be deleted in infamy forever.

Honestly, I meant to get back on and make sure that being totally erased from the system wouldn't happen, but I believe that I subconsciously made the decision to just dive into a fresh journey without holding onto to the thing that I had been letting control my time and efforts for the longest time.

I accidentally chose not to keep up with what was beginning to feel like an unnecessary competition in my life. I had no idea how the time and worry I was wasting was taking away from my relationships with people in real life and my efforts in school.

Because although I had technically had more contact with people before I hit that 'erase from memory' button, I had never felt more disconnected from myself or others than when I was scrolling through my phone. Making the subconscious decision to limit myself to two social media platforms was a step in the right direction because it has only allowed me to take a chill pill and realize that real relationships and accomplishments take effort — they require consistency & they need compassion in order to grow.

And that's exactly what I'm starting to rediscover — a confidence in compassion, a reinstatement of faith, a restoration of what once was, a fresh perspective of where priorities should fall in my life.

So thank you Snapchat for your silent removal of that unhealthy temptation in my life. It was much needed. I am forever grateful for the wakeup call.