Tonight is New Year’s Eve, and as I welcome 2026 with open arms and a worried yet excited heart in a few hours, I would like to close 2025 with a new Notes to Self that tackles about remembering… well, choosing what to remember.
Sometimes, it’s better to remember less. Not forget; remember less.
This quote that I have in mind clashes with the third Notes to Self (said by The Eleventh Doctor), which is:
The way I see it, life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t always spoil the good things or make them unimportant.
The Eleventh Doctor, Doctor Who: Vincent and The Doctor (S05E10)
Yes, it’s true. Life is a pile of good things and bad things, and I have to acknowledge both. However, this year, the long string of happy moments has given me not only a happy heart but also a peaceful mind (something I have been seeking for a long time). While I can’t literally forget the bad moments because my brain is not wired that way, remembering them less can preserve the happiness and peace I have now.
Last December 27, I looked back at my curated black-and-white Instagram feed (something I have built up since August 2013), and boy… what a history. It started as my visual diary filled with photos of Funko Pops and urban landscapes. Slowly, I adapted an alternating checkerboard theme for my feed (first, a full image, then a photo of a subject with a grey background, then a full image again, then a photo of a subject with a grey background again, and so on). As I curated my feed slowly, the posting frequency slowed as well because I focused more on writing here in The Diary and, well, life happened. I made promises to update my Instagram more often, but I failed multiple times. And when I looked back at my entire Instagram feed, while many photos brought a smile to my face, many also brought back ghosts.
As I said, while my brain can’t forget bad memories, remembering them less can preserve the happiness and peace I have now. So, I checked out my Instagram posts one by one (starting from August 2013), and then I archived everything all at once. I would like to start 2026 with open arms, a worried yet excited heart, and a box of clean slates—one of those slates is a clean, empty Instagram feed. All of my old Instagram posts served their purpose, and it’s time to make new, better visual memories.
And that concludes the 23rd Notes to Self and the final post for 2025. See you in the next post, and have a fruitful, happy, and safe 2026 to all!
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Header image: Nathan J Hilton of Pexels. Edited in Adobe Photoshop 2025.
The Diary of The Deranged Writer 