It was summer after my Senior year in high school. I had just come home from a party. I think I was high or drunk or all of the above. I sat down outside of my house and stayed there for a while in silence. After numerous nights I’ve went out and enjoyed, I finally came to a conclusion that I was not headed where I want to be.

My life was a complete mess by the time I had graduated high school. I spent my Junior year going out every week, stealing alcohol from local grocery stores and eventually getting arrested along with two of my friends. Senior year, I got rejected by my top 2 college choices, which was honestly very expected. Quite frankly, I wasn't even that disappointed, but my parents were.

When I was a kid, I was really creative, sociable, artistic and I’m not saying this to brag but I was really all these things. Of course by the time I graduated high school, I had forgotten all of that. I didn’t have any plans or a will to do anything great for myself. I just sat there, in silence, with a false sense of hope that one day everything was going to be all alright.

It was then when I realized.

I needed to change. I really did.

So I began to change.

I had to reinvent myself from bottom up. I had to start thinking differently, think like how I used to when I was a kid and when I actually wanted to be something. I realized that I actually needed to work and put in effort to expect any results. It was common sense that I tried so hard to avoid because life was so much easier when I hadn’t.

I ditched all my bad habits and began developing whole bunch of new ones, ones that will get me somewhere in life. I stopped going out as much, eventually stopped drinking and smoking, and I also stopped watching so much TV. Instead of all those things that were making me stagnant, I began doing more productive things— like writing a journal.

I won a journal at my college orientation for sharing a 10 minute abstract in front of three hundred students. On the front page of the journal it read, “Social Injustice Organizer.” I had absolutely no idea what that meant. In the journal, I started writing about my daily life and all the crazy thoughts I had that day. All kinds of crap, which all soon started turning into real, personal reflections. Images in my head turned into words on paper and I had to learn how to articulate all the flashing pictures in my head into letters before they quickly disappeared. Then when I read back all my pieces, I seemed to get to know myself just a little more.

Honestly, I was very inconsistent with my journal entries at first. I was still lazy and instinctively wanted to return to my horrible habits. When people say that they changed overnight, most of the time it’s going to be BS and it certainly was for me. It’s still a work and progress today and I think it always will be. In whatever you do, success isn’t earned, it’s maintained and improved. But because it’s a working progress, in the course of time I found a way to be more efficient and more effective.

The best “modification” I made along the way was a small pocket journal that I started carrying everywhere. It’s the best habit I’ve got into since my “awakening” moment. It goes everywhere I go, and in here I write every interesting thing that has ever came across my mind. I write things ranging from quotes, business ideas, rap lyrics, doodles, to-do lists, small journal entries, and rap lyrics again if you didn't believe me the first time. This pocket journal is more raw and personal. It is fresh and creative. It got me writing consistently and thinking creatively every time I pick up a pen. Now with this notebook, I was able to hold on to my flickering moments of ingenuity. By writing in this notebook, I was able to reassure myself that I was still creative, sociable, and artistic.

You probably wouldn’t believe me if I said that one of the biggest reward of writing to me is stress relief. The thing is, in a day, I take in so much information from so many different sources, it’s incredibly overwhelming. Well, writing gives me a platform to get all these information out while it allows (forces) me to do it creatively. I love looking at a really well written piece and I especially love it when I’m the author of it. I love writing poems because it allows me to break the boundaries of grammar and push the limits of artistry. I love writing lyrics even though I’m not very good at rapping; it allows me to be rhythmical and add climax to my words in accordance to the beat. There are so many different types of writing I can do, catered to my mood of the moment. And like I’ve mentioned before, while writing helps me empty my mind, reading my work helps me understand who I am and where I am. Needless to say, writing became the change I desperately needed in life.

Had I not sat outside of my house that night in silence, having a mid-life crisis at the age of 18, I would probably still be intoxicated and lifeless. Yet that small fragment of time has opened my eyes to a whole new expectation of life and most importantly, of myself. I’ve changed drastically since that point on and it can be proven by my writing. I’ve matured in the way I think and in the way I talk, and in so many different ways than I could even recognize.

To be really honest, writing is just a small part of the change, it’s just the beginning to a much bigger plan. I developed skills not only as a writer, but so much more as a person. I have many ideas that I wrote down in my journal that have now became my portfolio, my business and experience. In the future of my career, I can confidently say that writing will always continue to be the cornerstone of my dream and my idea.

I could understand now when people say “success begins with pen and paper.” Well, it’s true. The paper is my blueprint and all I have left to do is start planning. Every step of the way, the first thing I do is grab a pen. If life was a book and I’m the author of it, I just keep writing to the moment it is finished. The story unfolds in many twists and turns and while it may seem at times to be going in an unexpected direction, I’ve learned to skillfully adapt and get myself together in the chaos of readjustment.

Writing has changed my life so much; however, the best things about it is that, it will continue to change my life.