Dear Me

Happy International Women’s Day! The hip thing to do is to write to your younger self, so here goes nothing.

Dear Younger Me,

Yes, I’ve made it to adulthood. Yes, I’ve graduated college. Yes, I managed to go to France and Japan. I’ve done some cool things in my life and I’m slowly becoming the adult that I wanted to be. There’s still many things to work on that I’m sure Future Me will tell Present Me later on. I’m 26 and I still live at home and am praying that I can get into grad school, but right now I’m terrified it might not happen. I still work at the same grocery store I worked through college. I’m working on a book and perhaps this one I’ll stick through all the way and publish it instead of tossing it half way because I don’t think it’s good enough. What can I possibly tell you that will make you look forward to the future?

Don’t expect anything to turn out the way you thought it was going to.

I know it’s hard to grasp now. You think “well if I work hard, then I’ll get exactly what I want” and you don’t realize that you can still work hard and put everything you had into something and still fail. I know me, Younger Me. I don’t take failure well and completely blame myself for it. It’s good to be self critical, Younger Me, but not to the point that it completely crushes you and leaves you hopeless and depressed. Expect that not everything will work out the way you wanted it to, accept criticism gracefully, and you will turn out the better person for it. We’re both terrified of not having complete control of our own destinies, but it’s something we have to live with and make it work for us.

Good luck, Younger Me.

– Present Me