Letters to Myself
It’s that time again! Every year, I write myself a letter to my future self [or at least I try to remember to do that], and I often find myself re-discovering these letters at the most opportune times. You can read a little more about how I started doing this in my blog post about last year’s letter here, but I’ll give the short version for now.
Towards the end of my senior year of high school, my Chinese teacher made us write letters to our future selves. We worked on them during a full class period, then sealed them inside self-addressed envelopes that we took home at the end of the day. My letter, written about a week before my eighteenth birthday, resided in my nightstand drawer for about a year until I found it again the summer after my freshman year of college at William & Mary. For fun, I tore open the envelope, which read To Me, Open 2017. I expected sort of naïve ramblings about my high school problems, my seventeen-year-old life, and irrelevant drama. But that’s not at all what I found. I surprised myself in my ability to be curious and intelligent, open-minded and hopeful, even at seventeen.
Looking back on that first letter, I find that I’m now in a somewhat similar position. It’s been about four years, and once again I’m nearing the end of a major phase of life. Then, it was high school, now it’s college. The Quinn of four years ago and the Quinn of right now have a bit in common in terms of our liminal position. We’re both right on the brink of something big and new, something both very exciting and slightly terrifying. So, it’s really important to me to write to myself again now and catalogue how I’m feeling in this instant. In my past letters, I’ve not only summarized my current status, but I’ve also posed questions to my future self and left her words of encouragement. I have my letter from last February with me now, and it’s crazy to me how I feel both so similar to and so different from the person who wrote that.
It also seems like a really topical time of the year to do this project. Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and I’m single for the first time in a while. So not only is this letter something that I’m leaving for my future self to reflect on, it’s also a moment for me to reflect on my current position and remind myself of my own worth as an individual—as a person who writes herself a yearly letter because her experiences are important and worth recording. I think that this year maybe more than most, this letter is also a gesture of self-love. Alright, let’s get to it! Keep reading if you want to hear my musings for myself in 2020.
To Me, Open 2021
Dear Quinn,
Today is February 12th, 2020. It’s been about a year since I last wrote a letter like this, so now seems like as good a time as any. You might wonder why I wouldn’t wait until I reached some of the big milestones coming up—graduating from college, hopefully getting accepted into grad school, completing my honors thesis, figuring out my plans for next year. Sure, those things are big, and hopefully all things that I’ll accomplish, but I’ve done a lot in the past year regardless of those major steps. I think it’s important to recognize that even before I’ve concluded some pretty big endeavors in my life, working towards those goals and putting my best efforts out there are just as commendable as the achievements themselves.
Before I get into the deep stuff, just a quick review of some neat things we’ve accomplished in the past year. We’ve run four half marathons since my last letter, and in the most recent one finished in under two hours! I’m hoping maybe a full marathon is in the cards for 2020. This blog has been up and running for over a year now, which is awesome, and it’s something that I absolutely love doing. I’ve been working on a novel, and I wrote a full novella for my Creative Writing class last semester that I ended up really liking. I’m proud of the time that I’ve put into writing and the time I’ve put into running as well, both of which are two of my main focuses in my life at the moment. I got inducted into Phi Beta Kappa here at William & Mary, and I am continuing to love almost all my coursework here. So yeah, a pretty good year.
I guess that sets the stage! Now here are some things I’m looking forward to in the near future. I’m hoping that by the time you read this next year, we have in fact graduated from college and finished an honors thesis and figured out what’s next. Right now, I’m about halfway done with the honors project, which has predictable changed slightly in nature since its onset about a year ago. I’ve written thirty pages now centered around images of Helen of Troy in the British Renaissance period. I even have a working title: “The Commodification of Helen: The Phallic Economy of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida.” Sounds fancy and academic, right?! I’ve really enjoyed every minute of working on it, even when it takes up a ton of time and energy and sometimes feels like it might never get finished. But I really do believe that we can finish this, and I’m excited to see it happen. I hope that you can look back on this process one day and continue to recognize it as the commendable accomplishment that it is, even as you move forward to different projects. This is a big thing we’re doing!
The other stuff pretty much goes hand-in-hand: graduating college, figuring out what’s next after this. One big change since my last letter is my graduate school path. Last February, I was still planning on pursuing an advanced degree in English, but I’ve since decided to apply to Creative Writing MFA programs instead. As much as I love studying literature and academic writing, I really want to take a chance on pursuing my passion of writing. I really believe that, career-wise, you’ll be the best at doing the thing that you love the most. You’ll want to invest so much more time in it, you’ll care about it and bring a passion to it. Further, do you ever think about how many hours of the day, of your life, that you spend working? It’s a lot. So, it’s extremely important to me to do something that I love, and I want to put myself in a position to do so by hopefully continuing forward in the world of Creative Writing. But, since the outcome of those grad school applications is still uncertain, I just want to leave you a reminder here that regardless of acceptances or denials, you are a good writer. You are smart and hard-working, and it’s all going to work out no matter what happens. You can always apply again, or you can choose a different path to take. No matter what though, please keep writing. I can’t imagine life without writing, and that seems to be a common theme throughout these letters, even dating back to the inaugural one of 2016. I really hope that you’re still writing.
Graduating college—well, that’s probably going to happen. Unless I royal screw things up between now and May. Let’s hope that one’s pretty much set in stone. In my aforementioned first letter, I wrote about being nervous to move down to Virginia and come here to William & Mary. But really, it’s been the best decision I’ve ever made. I feel so lucky to have spent the past four years of my life here in Williamsburg, challenging myself academically and otherwise, and meeting the people who I really think will be my forever friends. Before I came to college and in my first couple years here, I would laugh to myself when adults told me the classic trite sentiments: college flies by, these will be the best years of your life. Maybe they will be. I obviously can’t know that yet, but I do know that these have been four fantastic years, and they certainly did fly by. As much as I’ve enjoyed college though, I am also so excited for the next step and to see where my life takes me.
I don’t think I’ve ever been in such an uncertain position before. Up until this point, life has felt pretty planned out. Elementary school, middle school, high school, and then a little navigation to figure out which college to go to. But, for me at least, it was never a question of if I would go to college, it was just which one. So that step was still pretty clear. But now, the options have multiplied tenfold. There’s no obvious and easy next step. I sometimes wonder if this is the first real decision I’ll ever have to make, and moreover, if I’ll make the right decision. It’s a little bit daunting. That said though, I do trust my judgment and my ability to make an intelligent choice about my future post-college. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what that entails.
One aspect that especially excites me is the idea of kind of going out into the world on my own. I’m trying to work on being a more independent person. For a long time, having been in a nearly three-year relationship during much of college, I imagined that I would be sharing my life with someone else after graduating, making decisions together. That’s ended up not being the case. I don’t want to say that I’m on my own for the first time in a long time, because of course I have an amazing support network of friends and family. But I think it’s okay to recognize how that’s not quite the same as having a long-term romantic partner. So in a way, I am on my own in a way that I have not been for some time. I’m very lucky to have had such a healthy, compassionate, loving relationship in college, and I really truly value everything that I learned from that relationship and all of the time that I spent with Dave. As I begin this next phase of my life, however, I am also looking forward to taking the time to get to know myself better and work on becoming the person that I want to be.
For me, that’s a huge focus right now. I want to devote time to myself and be the best version of myself. I’ve realized that I’m not great at being alone. Maybe that comes from growing up in such a big family—I’ve always had other people around, I’ve always had a lot of friends, and I’ve often had boyfriends throughout high school and obviously college. Either way, I want to be more comfortable spending time with just myself and devoting energy to bettering myself and pursuing my passions. Relatedly, I find that I can be impatient when it comes to love. I want so badly to meet that amazing person out there that I’m going to spend the rest of my life with, and I find myself getting caught up in things that are clearly not that because I’d rather have someone than no one. But I do believe that the right person is out there for me and that they’re worth the wait. And importantly, I want to be the best that I can be when they do come along. I think I have some work to do on myself before I get there. That’s a big resolution I have for us in 2020: be content with being alone. Learn to love yourself enough that you’re enough for yourself; be a complete person on your own before falling in love with someone else.
So I guess this is the part where I usually speculate on my future life, asking my future self questions about what’s been going on. The thing is, a lot is up in the air right now. Did we end up going to grad school? If so, where? If not, what are we doing instead? And most importantly either way, are we enjoying it? If not, maybe it’s time to reevaluate and start working on a plan for a shift in paths. Have we found love? Have we gotten any more tattoos? What’s important to us right now? As scary and uncertain as this time is, there’s also lots of amazing things coming soon, and I really can’t wait to see where life goes from here.
One more thought before I go: you’ve got this. You’re an insightful, bright, introspective person, and you deserve to commit to yourself and work towards becoming the woman that you want to be. Wherever life takes you next, I know that you can handle it, because you’ve proved time and time again that you can make the most of even the worst situations. When life seems hard, just remember all of the things you have done, and let those inform all of the things you can do—which is a lot. It might sound strange to say, but I believe that you’re on track to becoming an amazing person with an amazing life. Don’t ever doubt that.
See you in a year!
Love,
Quinn
