For me, part of trying to be extroverted and outwardly social is having friends to back me up. This school year has been my first time in the school district, so I came here having no friends in the school. At my previous school, I surprisingly had a lot of friends; they made going to school really fun, and I loved hanging out with them. At the end of eighth grade, my friends and I split into different schools, but we still tried to keep in contact. I am still really good friends with the majority of them, but we are in different schools, so sometimes it’s hard for things to be the way they used to be.

I feel like this is one of the reasons I have kept to myself and stayed in my “bubble.” At my old school, my friends were really good at convincing me to do things that were out of my comfort zone. They convinced me to be in two school musicals, Once Upon A Mattress and Annie, and they convinced me to play for the high school varsity basketball team when the school needed players. Just recently, I was thinking about this, and I came to the conclusion that if I contacted my old friends more, I would be motivated to do more and try harder. With this in mind, I made connecting with my old friends my first task in trying to be more outgoing.

To connect with my friends, I decided that I needed an iPhone 7, so I finally convinced my mom to get me one for Christmas. The first thing I did was begin Snapchat streaks with some of my friends; streaks are honestly a really good way to stay connected to people because you can see what they are doing every day, and the numbers motivate you to keep it going. The next thing I did was FaceTime one of my best friends, India. It was really great to get to talk to her for an hour practically face-to-face like we used to. By doing these two seemingly simple things, I feel like I have made some progress, and I feel like I am ready for the next task in my endeavor.