I would say that gratitude journaling is a good way to get into the habit of learning to control your perspective. I know you want to take a break, and that’s fine, but I would say try to keep going. Learning to manage your perspective isn’t easy and can be confusing. It’s actually great that you have been struggling with it for three weeks. It’s a sign that you’re learning.
The thing we are practicing is the management of perspective. Perspective meaning the valuation of what is normal. If our perspective of what is normal holds higher than reality, it causes us to feel negative emotions. If our perspective of what is normal holds lower than of reality, it causes us to feel positive emotions. The impact of the emotion will be relative to the importance or value of the idea.
The variables that we play around with, to achieve strong positive mental states are the perspective and the value that we assign things. Gratitude journaling is one way to make this a conscious process. Eventually this does become an unconscious process. But to improve it, we must either have an environment that can encourage it naturally or we can do an activity that allows for deliberate practice.
The emotions we experience seem to be a way to help us survive and keep our theories better in alignment with reality. To be accurate and not misleading, positivity is associated with delusion for this reason. Positive people are people who are consistently reflecting on life out of alignment with reality. Meaning, their mental model of the world is much bleaker than the average person. Becoming a positive person from being naturally more negative leads to a person experiencing a lot of pain mentally because of the destruction of that mental perspective.
The opposite is true. Just to give you a complete picture, A negative person or a person who consistently experiences negative emotions outwardly comes to this state by having strong expectations in their mind that do not align with reality often. It is also a form of delusion.
Being a positive person, or a negative person will generally not be better or worse than the other. Because the pain will always need to be present either externally or internally. The emotions are just a way to achieve homeostasis. The overall goal of some spiritual practices that go heavily into these ideas ultimately abandon seeking pleasure for this reason. But in the end, there is no escaping the minds desire to be aligned with reality.
The benefits of being a positive person is that a person will outwardly reflect a positive disposition. However like I said, this is achieved through time, effort, and pain. The consequences of letting our mental state exceed our reality allows for us to experience positive emotions internally, but subjects us more to negative emotions when met with reality at an undermined time. And lastly, although a strong alignment with reality and the mind is possible with some error because of the instability of predicting reality, it does cause one to lack emotions, and the inability to exude vibrancy in their daily life unlike someone who is seen as positive. The balanced state comes with with the ability of becoming perceived as more rational, and more consistent. So yeah, no right or wrong way to live life. Everyone has a solution, but only you can live your own life based off of your experiences and life situation.
Personally, I strive to be a positive person when I am determined to make improvements, but I don’t prioritize it, as in the end it generally seems to work out to be equal. It’s just one way of being. I hope that this helps spur on some insight into the nature of things, but I’m sure that most of it has to be achieved through a personal commitment to wanting to learn things like this. These are just a reflection of my opinions from my life. I’m sure there are other models of thinking that can approximate emotions or how life works as well. 
thanks for reading.
The photos sound really awesome - so is it gratitude photojournaling?