Pete knew what he was talking about, that's for sure. Mint is a beast, it spreads underground and those roots just keep going, so even if you pull the top part the roots are still down there doing their thing. Good call on the separate pots, that's really the only way to keep it from taking over everything. One thing to watch though, mint can still send runners out the drainage holes and sneak into whatever is sitting next to it, so give those pots a little space from your other plants. Mine stayed put once it had its own pot but you still have to yank out the runners that try to escape now and then.

Wow, $120 on a notebook with blanks to fill in? That is wild. I get that people like the idea of a little push to get writing, but you can find the same kind of story starters for free online in like two seconds. The real problem here is not that you only used it twice, it is that this thing ever cost that much in the first place. Sounds like someone slapped "prompt journal" on a cheap notebook and marked it up because it looks nice on a shelf. Chalk it up as a lesson and next time just google some prompts before you drop a car payment on paper.