Started this 9 days ago, right when midterms and extra shifts landed in the same week and I kept telling myself I’d “pay attention” to the flare without actually writing anything down.
So I cut it down to three words. After each shift: which spot, how bad on a 1-3 scale, one thing that happened that day – skipped lunch, cold wind, whatever came to mind first. Maybe 20 seconds, which mattered on the nights I didn’t get home until 11pm with reading still open on the laptop.
By night 9 I had a short list instead of nothing, and a pattern showed up I hadn’t clocked before – the worse nights lined up with the days I skipped lunch between class and the shift, not with the weather like I’d assumed.
Not calling it fixed anything. It’s just easier to keep up than a real journal, and it’s still going.