Face it.

I'm not one to hide my emotions, especially when it comes to my face. If I'm mad at someone, I glare at them. If I think something is funny, I smile and laugh out loud. If I feel stuck or bored, my face droops and I roll my eyes.

When I was younger, I meticulously kept journals where I wrote every thought or feeling I had. Now, I regret all of those ridiculous thoughts and I can only hope that my head was filled with better, more meaningful things as well (that I just chose not to write down, maybe?). Then one day three years ago, I wrote my last journal entry. I didn't know it was my last at the time, but it just was. I don't miss overanalyzing my daily life, but I do miss having a sliver of what my life was like from day to day, and over time.

For some reason on my first day at my new job, I was looking at different features of my computer and I came across Photobooth. Since there's a pretty brick wall behind me, I snapped a picture of myself. Now it's become a part of my daily routine. I make the face of exactly how I'm feeling when I arrive at work, whether it's frustrated with the weather, exhilarated from a nice bike ride, exhausted from a late-night show, nervous for an important meeting, or looking forward to the weekend. And sometimes, I simply make a face that I've never made before in order to make myself laugh. Looking back on six weeks of them, I can remember why I was feeling the way my face reflects for almost every day.

Plus I realized I wear a lot of purple.

If you don't like to journal, I suggest doing something on the regs so you can track yourself through time. If it's not a photo, maybe it's one thought a day. Or keeping track of the thing that made you laugh hardest every day. Or great recipes. Or outfits. Or conversations. Or drawings. It's fun and it makes me feel like my life is meaningful enough to track. (Maybe it's really not, but I like tricking myself into thinking it is.)