The other night, I sat down to write a handwritten note.

It had been an emotional few days. Usually, writing is where I go when I don’t know what to do with everything I’m feeling.

I opened an old diary and tried again.

Nothing.

Which is funny, because it’s been almost exactly one year since I started writing again.

I majored in writing in college and spent years in classes having my work picked apart. Somewhere along the way, I learned that the best writing isn’t always the most polished.

I learned that during my senior capstone.

We had months to work on one final project, and with two weeks left, I had basically nothing. I had torn apart every idea because none of them felt like me.

So, at almost the last possible moment the night before it was due, I decided to publish my diary.

My real diary.

Years of thoughts, relationships, mistakes, nights out, and conversations I had written down with no intention of anyone else ever reading them.

My professor loved it.

Some other people did not.

And in fairness, there are probably a few people I dated, kissed, or simply crossed paths with who deserved a disclaimer that knowing me came with the slight possibility of ending up on a page someday.

To those people: sorry. Mostly.

That project eventually went on to be published and recognized with a Miami Writing Award.

But what stayed with me wasn’t the recognition. It was realizing that the piece that worked was the one where I stopped trying so hard to write something good and wrote something honest instead.

I still believe that.

I’ve never been interested in writing about a perfect version of life. I like the small stuff — thoughts, conversations, people, places, embarrassing moments, complicated ones, and the things a lot of us experience but don’t always say out loud.

Somewhere after college, I took a break.

Writing became emails, presentations, meeting notes, and everything else that comes with having a job.

A year ago, I started again.

There was no launch plan for One Business Day. No editorial calendar. No real idea of what I wanted it to become.

I just missed writing.

So I wrote.

Over the past year, it’s become a collection of the things I’ve noticed, questioned, learned, and lived through — careers, money, relationships, friendship, travel, books, design, growing up, and all the strange realizations that come with figuring out your twenties while you’re actively living them.

Some pieces I’ve loved. Some I’ve immediately wondered if I should take down. And some have made people reach out and tell me they felt exactly the same way.

Those messages have probably been my favorite part.

So, to everyone who has inspired, reached out, shared a piece, or told me something I wrote put words to something you were feeling — thank you.

Writing is strange. You sit alone with a thought, hit publish, and have no idea where it lands.

Every once in a while, someone tells you.

Thank you for giving my words somewhere to land.

Writing has also given me a record of who I was when I wrote each piece, what mattered to me, what I was afraid of, and what I thought I had figured out.

Sometimes you’re writing from the middle of the story.

Sometimes you change your mind.

Sometimes you get it completely wrong.

And sometimes you care so much about something that finding the right words feels almost impossible.

Last night was one of those nights.

I sat down with a note I desperately wanted to get right and a diary I couldn’t bring myself to write in.

Tonight, I wrote this.

Maybe that’s what I love most about writing. You don’t always understand what a moment means while you’re living it. Sometimes you just have to live it first and find the words later.

I still have the diary from college. Now I have a year of One Business Day.

There are a lot of blank pages left, and I have no idea what will eventually fill them.

For now, I think I’ll just keep paying attention. To the people, places, conversations, and moments that matter, especially the ones you know you’ll always want to remember.

And I’ll keep writing them down.

— 𝑂𝓃𝑒 𝐵𝓊𝓈𝒾𝓃𝑒𝓈𝓈 𝒟𝒶𝓎