I have come to realize that there is an opposing force for everything in the world and in life; there seems to always be something on the opposite end of a spectrum, complementing the other and balancing the scale out. An antonym for all. You’ve got men and women, positives and negatives, love and hate, black and white, rich and poor, beautiful and hideous, beginning and end.

Like all of the above, there is a also an antonym for having a bad day. Obviously, that very antonym is, of course, having a good day! :) Now there have definitely been times when I had an absolutely awful day on earth that seems more like a night in Hell instead; on those days, nothing goes right and I am stressed out of my mind. On those days, it seems like there is no such thing as a good day. Nonetheless, it is on those days when I wish and hope for a good day…like today.

My favorite type of good day is the kind when good, little things occur and slowly build up into a really good day, or rather (excuse my cheesy analogy) a “mountain of happiness”; there I stand at the very peak, my stomach swelling with excitement as I look down at the rest of the world with a positive attitude. In my own strange, silly mind, each little happy event is considered a stone, which makes sense if you think about it. As the stones build up, a mountain is created. :)

1) I work for my high school’s newspaper as an editor and photographer. Today, we just published and distributed our first issue of second semester! It turned out really well. In this issue, I had written that “Texting While Driving Sucks” article for the Opinion Section and an article on the new Chinese students who immigrated to America from China (including my friend Charles). Yesterday, I got the most compliments on these two articles than I ever have for any other article before! At lunch, Charles came up to me with a grin glowing on his face and told me that, all throughout the day, several random students he didn’t know approached him and either said hi, waved, or smiled. One of these students is a friend of my friend’s; apparently, she had been reading my article intently and suddenly exclaimed out loud, “Hey, that Chinese guy is in my math class!” Many students know about him now, are willing to befriend him, and are extremely interested in his move from China to America. Knowing that I have been able to showcase Charles’s life-changing story and provide him with new friends in this strange new country (strange to him, at least) has proven that I can truly make a difference and improve the lives of others through my writing.

2) After every newspaper issue is published, we always have a class party and a voting poll on Superlatives for awards such as Best Story, Best Graphic, etc. For this issue, I received Best Photograph! I did not expect this award at all, but it meant a lot to me. The photo I took was of a group of students wearing adorable snuggies. I got a delicious chocolate egg as a materialistic award, but the confidence boost was definitely the greater, winning reward (don’t you just love a play on words?).

3) As the Opinion Section started brainstorming for our next issue, we gossiped about our last issue and the different articles that other student journalists wrote. Quite unexpectedly, one fellow Opinion writer mentioned that she loved my texting article and that it had literally made her fall off her chair, laughing. Our Opinion editor animatedly agreed and, before I knew it, both of them started quoting directly from my article and commenting on the hilarious sarcasm that dripped from underneath. All I could do was stutter a lowsy “thanks!” but inside my stomach was a bubbling soup of excitement and joy. Growing up, being a famous writer has always been my dream. I would fantasize about my books being chosen by school teachers to be read and analyzed in classes. I imagined what it would be like to win The Nobel Prize in the Literature department. And I imagined readers all over the world quoting my works of literature and magazine articles.

4) The episode of Smallville that had aired tonight was awesome, as usual! The suspense seriously set my heartbeat off and at one point I really thought one of the main characters, Zod, was going to die. Although Smallville has turned into some sort of horror drama, it has been great having key traditions, such as Clark coming to save his friend at the end of the day like he has done in so many other episodes, has truly kept up the spirit of Smallville and of Superman. Watching Smallville was a great way to end an amazing day.

You see, bad days come, but they also go in the end. However bad they may be, I have realized that those horrible, awful bad days are worth going through to get to the good days, which I know are just right around the corner on the opposite end of the spectrum. I know this, of course, because life is simply just a balancing act.

~TRA