Letters to Myself

To My Younger Self:

I’m not sure where to start. There’s so much I could tell you – guidance I could give, warnings I could issue, reassurance I could offer – but I also firmly believe that I would not be who where I am today if you had not been who or where you were through every moment of my past and your future. It sounds trite, but in this case it really is about the journey and not the destination.  I am who I am because of all the many moments, choices and yes, mistakes you make along the way. Without this history, exactly as it happened, I – this specific version of me sitting here on a rainy April afternoon, typing on this tablet while a pasta sauce simmers vigorously on the stove behind me and the dogs nap in the other room – would not exist. And I – this specific version of me – want to exist. All told, I like who I am and my life is one I am grateful for. So I’ll skip the spoilers and specific admonitions and opt instead to tell you the things I tell myself, the things I most need to hear today. I’m not sure what they will mean to you, but here you go:

       1. Try not to be too hard on yourself.
       2. Embrace the uncertainty of life.
       3. Don’t just do what comes easily – put yourself in a position to fail.
       4. When you fail, keep trying. Life is not all or nothing.
       5. Keep searching for your voice. You have something worth saying.

To My Older Self:

Version 1: January 30, 1989

My Future

In 20 years I will be 28. I will be single. I will live in New York City. I will be a major in math, English, and history. I will teach seventh and eighth grade. I will teach at least one of the subjects I major in. I will teach in a public school.

I will live in a single house and have a flower garden in the front yard, and in the back yard I will have a fruit and vegetable garden.

In my spare time, I will draw and read. I will own a small, four-person car.

The End

Version 2: April 22, 2020

To be honest, I don’t think of you much or often. Maybe because I don’t’ fully know who you are. My vision of you keeps changing as I myself change . . . But that feels like a cop-out. After all, my eight-year-old self got things pretty right all those years ago. For some reason, my 39-year-old self doesn’t like to admit that I know myself (you) well, that my core is fairly constant through all ages, that committing a particular vision of the future to the page is not an irreversible commitment or something that I have to get “just right”. So, shall I give it a try, with a nod to the 1989 version of me?

My Future

               In 20 years, I will be 59. I will be legally single but happily partnered and fond of the companionship my partner provides. We will live in Washington state, either near to or within Seattle. Unless we live in Tennessee – it’s cheaper there and closer to family. I will still teach in some capacity or another, whether professionally or informally, perhaps through content creation or mentorship of some kind.

I will live in a single-family home with a flower garden in the front and a vegetable garden in the back.

In my spare time, I will read and write because books and language will always be central to who I am. I will be surrounded by animals: dogs for sure and hopefully some others as well – chickens, goats, maybe a cow.

The End

Except that it isn’t the end. This, too, feels like a cop-out. I’m hedging my bets, sticking to the things I can easily predict. The things that don’t require risk – either the risk of being wrong about who I will become and what I will accomplish or the risk of doing and becoming someone or something outside of what is obvious.

What my younger and my current selves weren’t quite brave enough to put out into the world is this: I am a writer. One who for most of my years so far has not lived into this truth. And one who is trying to do so now. And one who hopes – but doesn’t quite know in the same way as I know other things – that at 59 I won’t need to soft pedal this title but will have earned it fully and proudly. Hopes that I will know it for myself and that others will know it of me as well.

And if you’re not there yet, 59-year-old me, well then, here are a few things you might need to hear:

       1. Try not to be too hard on yourself.
       2. Embrace the uncertainty of life.
       3. Don’t just do what comes easily – put yourself in a position to fail.
       4. When you fail, keep trying. Life is not all or nothing.
       5. Keep searching for your voice. You have something worth saying.