February 15, 2020
Are you happy most of the time, with temporary intervals of unhappiness? Or are you unhappy most of the time, with temporary intervals of happiness?
I don’t want to be picky, but I’m going to be. 
Before that: Thanks for sharing and talking openly despite the very personal nature of the content. Otherwise others and I would perhaps never have known such things existed. I think this kind of courage is necessary when blogging when you want to reach people in a not strictly academic environment, and even there openness is broadly a positive thing.
Now a little picking:
You yourself said that it’s been you who made the observations, and it’s been you who made the decisions. Please keep that in mind! Tools won’t do anybody any good if the individuals don’t actually and actively involve themselves. In weird, natural way, saying it’s the tools opens the way to blaming tools for our failures we don’t want to face ourselves.
Also, the whole process you described is pretty much what writing a diary / journal is all about. In the book series “Myst” (awesome game, even more awesome books), they say the personal journal is like a compass, for to know where you need to go, you need to know where you’re coming from. Just like your year in colors! 
That said, your post made me think about accessibility and “user experience”. Nowadays you would need to be a bibliophile or traditionalist to realy feel good about using a book or digital journal. (They were popular for a time, but that didn’t last very long.) We as a species have involved a lot during the last century, mostly thorugh our tools and environmental changes (talking about technology, not climate. See “My generations technology is the next generations environment” quote from somebody whos name I forgot).
Therefore it is important we figure out new, modern ways to make use of these “old” concepts, to keep ourselves motivated and as an aid to improve our life.
~Cheers!
Thanks for the reply. I totally agree that the tool didn’t do much by itself- in fact the first time I saw one of these “year in pixels” projects, it was somebody filling in squares in a physical notebook.
On the other hand, I’m also very bad at keeping up with this kind of thing, so having a daily reminder (actually two daily reminders) was pretty crucial. Granted I could have done the same thing with an alarm clock or something, but there’s something really nice about your phone asking you how you’re feeling, and being able to take 10 seconds to record that day’s entry.
I think this kind of assistance is a beautiful use of technology, and I’d love to focus more on that than the negatives, which are generally easier to see.