I think it was ACB who turned me on to this FutureMe thing, where you can email yourself a year from now, whatever you want yourself a year from now to know from yourself today. Yesterday I got the email I’d written this time last year. It’s funny, isn’t it, how some things change and how some things stay the same and how all those things change and stay and stay and change, every day, all the time.
Here’s what I wrote to myself last year:
I’m sitting at my desk at work daydreaming about what I want from my life. I leave for New Zealand in about thirteen weeks, if you can imagine such a thing. Well, more like eighteen weeks…I quit this job in thirteen weeks. Wild. Mom is coming to visit this weekend and I am feeling a little headachey and sore-throated.
I feel pretty good, but pretty absent about leaving for NZ, I’ll tell you. I’m whiling away the time here by “manifesting,” just writing down all this stuff I want in my life. It’s pretty prosaic but there it is:
· I’d like to buy a house (or, a condo)
· In Ballard. Probably.
· I’d like to find some very satisfying work that pays well and is challenging and secure and allows me to travel.
· I’d like to have a really fun social life and group of friends for the rest of my life.
· I would like to explore spirituality more and find a spiritual community.
· I’d like to continue dancing.
· I’d like to stay very healthy and fit.
· I’d like to feel beautiful.
· I’d like to use my strengths every day.
· I’d like to remain relatively stress-free.
· I’d like to have a lot of success in my life on several levels, including professional and relationship-al. (Relationship-al is not really a word).
· I’d like to feel more grounded in my community.
· I’d like to be more creative.
· I’d like to write a book.
· I’d like to publish a book.
· I want to speak in public.
· I want really satisfying friends.
· I want to take care of myself financially and help support my community (local and global) as well.
· I want to eat very well and cook more.
· I want to decrease my environmental impact.
· I want to travel more.
· I want to spend some time in France or Italy.
· I want to mentor someone.
· I want to be mentored!
· I want to be more artistic and participate in art more.
· I want to be a good auntie to my friends’ children.
· I want to let go of some demons I have.
· I want to be very fabulous.
· I want to dance more.
· I want to live mindfully.
· I want to read a lot of good books.
· I want to take more chances.
· I want to take a fiction class.
· I want to learn to scuba dive.
· I want to learn more about marine biology.
That’s what I’m thinking about today, April 11, 2006.
Here’s some advice from me to you:
Be careful about manipulative boys. Steer clear in general.
Be gentle with yourself.
Hold on to the people you love, even if they don’t love you very much.
I hope you’re having a wonderful day…I wish I knew what your day was like, I can hardly imagine.
If I could, I’d tell the me of April 2006 that New Zealand is going to work out fine–so fine, in fact, that if all goes well the me of April 2008 might very well be writing another journal entry from Wellington just as the me from April 2007 is doing so right at this moment. I’d tell her that she was pretty smart in her advice about boys and gentleness and love and that I plan to keep following it as much as I’m able. I’d tell her that her life in the Southern Hemisphere resembles her life in the Northern in most of the ways she’d imagine: fuzzy academic job, nice fun friends, great housemate, bellydance, difficulty finding a pair of jeans that fit, lots of yogurt consumption, terrible weather for nine months out of the year. I think she’d want to know that the ways her life in the Southern Hemisphere differ from that in the Northern can’t be listed in a bullet-point format for reasons she doesn’t quite understand; that people will tell her she’s changed and she won’t know why; that she’ll still be bound to some of her demons that will not let her completely go, but that she will be the most free and the most powerful she’s ever been. Ordinary, extraordinary: everyone’s life is both those things, every day, but she will have needed to go to the other side of the world to figure that out. She did that, though. She was a little braver than I would have given her credit for. I’m proud of her.
Me of April 2008, I am sitting on the bed in my bare feet and yoga pants with honey all over my face and the heater on because all of a sudden it’s cold and gray and autumnal around here and I have to wear jackets again. It’s about ten on a Thursday night and I’m listening to my Moody Mix on iTunes and drinking down the tail end of a cup of tea with milk and sugar. Can you hear the me of right now, do you know I’m wondering about you? Where are you? What are you doing? Did I make the right decisions this month, next month; did I do the right things? Are you all right? How different from the me of right now are you? What have I kept from this year, do you know yet? What have I let go? Has it all worked out?
Let me know this time next year, all right?
Comments
3 responses to “Me Of Right Now”
Hi, Chiara, of Right Now.
Stop me if I’ve mentioned this before. I actually find the movie “13 Going on 30” kind of poignant for a reason pointed at here. Would our Self of the Past approve of the decisions we’ve made, the friendships we’ve forged for our Self of Right Now? It’s an important guidepost, the Self of Past. I think this is because we are a sum total of our experiences, and if we don’t will ourself to experience more more more, we don’t grow.
And if we don’t continue to eat more yogurt, we won’t have strong bones to stand up enough to whatever judgements our Self of Past might have.
Viva la vida. Come la yogurt.
I agree with all but “Hold on to the people you love, even if they don’t love you very much.”
Life is too short to try and cling to people who don’t love you every bit as much as you love them. Even family. Even old friends. People who love you, and who you love back, and is equal and feeds both of you in your minds, hearts and souls…that is the only kind of relationship you should really make time for.
:)
I LOVE YOU!
Hi, Chiara: Creepy lurker here :)
Thanks for the idea; here’s what I wrote to myself to be read next year.
Dear FutureMe,
You’re almost 27 (OMG TWENTY-SEVEN!?!?!? You’d better DO SOMETHING about that!).
I hope that in the past year you’ve learned the things that you most needed to: that you can live your life without him, and that it doesn’t hurt; that you are full of funny jokes and good ideas and love; that you are right to keep hoping; that you are every bit as strong as you need to be and every bit as good as you need to be; that you are worth knowing and worth loving, and that what you have to say is worth hearing.
I hope that in the past year, you have been able to trust and open up to someone, and if you haven’t, FutureMe: it’s time now. Let somebody touch you, inside and out. Also, if you haven’t, PLEASE: let somebody touch you with tongue, and with his penis. Twice. At least.
I imagine that in the past year, you’ve been cautious. You’ve been sensible and stable. You’ve taken good care of yourself. You should keep doing that. But you’re safe enough now. You’ve healed enough, and now it’s time to take chances. You’ve been afraid your whole life, and of what? You are strong enough. You don’t have to be afraid.
In the next year, eat things that taste good and drink too much wine (just a little too much, not so much you puke). Water your plants (and if your plants are dead, GET NEW PLANTS). Meet people. Hug people. Write something. You can. Even if you are scared, you can. Go on vacation and lie on a beach. Think about buying a place with a yard, so you can get a dog. Walk it every day. Moisturize and drink lots of water, and if anyone thinks you’re still not good enough, FUCK ‘EM. HARD.
You’re tall and you’re pretty, you’re funny and strange. You’re your mother and father; think about what that means. You’re a woman. You’re grown. And you’re doing just fine.
Love,
FormerYou