A couple of weeks ago, I found a letter. It was in a sealed envelope with “DON’T OPEN UNTIL 2022” written in big, angry letters. I opened it, and got transported back to 2014. I was 24 years old, working at a startup in San Francisco. It was right before the Queen of Shitty Robot YouTube era started, and I was writing to my future self. Here’s an excerpt:
Hi Simone. I don’t know if you’ll remember when I wrote this. To jog your memory: I’m in a bar called Revolution in San Francisco. I’m drinking a beer alone, that I got for free when I told the bartender that it was my birthday.
There’s so much that I want to know. And some things that I might not want to know. Are you even alive? Are mom and dad alive? It makes me sad that it’s a relevant question.
You probably have kids. Are you as good of mom as you thought you’d be? Probably not.
I am, as often, confused about life. I’m working with something that I thought would make me happy. Let me rephrase that: I’m working with something that I thought would give me an everyday life that I could live with. Could tolerate, accept, appreciate even. But I’m so itchy. I cannot rest in everyday life.
From 2014
I just feel that I have so many more gears in me that I’m not using. So much of myself that is dormant, unused. Have nothing to complain about in my life, but I somehow expected more. I expected to enjoy it. But I’m not. I have no idea what my next move is going to be and I’m running out of dreams to fulfill. I applied to MIT on a whim the other week. Did not go to the interview. I applied to an intensive iOS development class in NY. Did not go to the interview.
What do you do for work? Hopefully lots of things. Are you famous? Are you an entrepreneur? How many men, how many dead, how many hobbies, favorite colors, apartments, boats, friends, drugs, griefs and flus?
I just need a direction, a goal, a temporary purpose. A destination other than the end of the calendar year. I really hope you’re laughing at my naivety while reading this. That there’s so much that I don’t know. That you’re thinking “you just wait, Simone” and that the upcoming years are filled with so many unexpected doors to walk through and corners to turn.
Don’t forget to love yourself. I do.
// Simone, 24 years old.
It’s hard to describe how reading this letter made me feel. A couple of months later I built the toothbrush helmet and got thrust into a career I could never have predicted or expected. It felt like a tiny bridge opened to that time, and it made me really proud of everything that I've done since then. 24 year old me was right, all I kept thinking while reading the letter was "oh you truly have no idea. You just wait."
IN OTHER NEWS
I just got home after three weeks in Stockholm! I got so much quality time time with my family, which is best illustrated with this series of selfies:
Laura and her dog Smudo drove up from Germany, and we spent NYE drinking tea, playing board games and putting our teenage selves to shame.
My flight home was a joy, if by joy you mean: getting up at 5.30AM to head to the airport but there has been an accident on the freeway so I miss my flight but I manage to get the last ticket on a flight that leaves a couple of hours later so I do a proper viking funeral for the extra $1600 that I had to spend on that ticket and getting home to LA ends up taking 26 hours from door to door. At the end, my butt started taking the shape of a manhole cover, and I’m so happy to be home so it can return to its former glory. But until then, it’s all this after three weeks apart:
XOXO
Simone