Letters from My Past Selves

A little extra post outside of my monthly update!

The other day I was digging through my email and found something very nostalgic that I’d completely forgotten about: a couple of emails that I’d written to my Future Self using a website called Future Me. I think it’s fun to have an archive of different versions of myself to look back on, and for some reason I feel the urge to share so I’m posting them here.

Up first, a letter I wrote in 2014 that I received in 2018:

Dear FutureMe,
Congratulations! You’ve (probably) graduated from Northeastern! I’m writing to you from 2014, my freshman year here. I should probably be studying logic and comp right now (remember that class?).

How are you? Did you follow through with majoring in CS and IM? Did you get a job and a cool tech company or startup? How many hackathons did you go to throughout college?

How are your friends? Are you still hanging out with the original 5th floor crew? I hope you are, because they are super cool people. And I hope you remember all the fun nights watching movies, eating tasty burger, and participating in random shenanigans.

Since you’re graduating/graduated, I want to give you some advice. (Then again, do you want to take advice from a nineteen year old?) Don’t lose yourself trying to climb some corporate ladder. Don’t make yourself miserable trying to get some prestigious position. Just do what you like and be happy. When you’re old you’ll want to look back on good times, so have good times. Make your life legen-wait for it-dary, but not for other people, for yourself. I know you and I are ambitious, but don’t let that make us regret our decisions. That said, don’t regret anything, even if it was a terrible decision. Sometimes terrible decisions make great stories.

I hope you passed logic and comp,
Amelia

Honestly, this kind of made me tear up. There’s something beautifully earnest and un-jaded about my love for my friends and my need to pursue passion and happiness in this letter. It’s so easy as an adult to get caught up in the logistics of life, social expectation, and “the path your life is supposed to take.” But my younger self was so unbothered by any of this, and it serves as a good reminder that actually, leaving my job for freelancing, and taking the massive pay cut to do it was the right move. As long as I’m paying the bills, I’ve got the life I want pursuing the work I want. Also as of writing, I’ve just hung out with the same 5th floor crew visiting Boston from NY 💜

Here’s another I sent in 2020 and received in 2023:

Dear FutureMe,

What am I (you) doing with my life?

It’s 2020. The world may or may not be ending. Australia is on fire and coronavirus may kill us all if global warming doesn’t take us first (it’s somehow been 40 degrees all winter???)

I’m almost 2 years out of college, and I’ve been at the same marketing company the whole time. I’m on the board of AIGA Boston. I think after another year on my lease I’ll probably try moving to New York.

I’ve had a couple of life upgrades since graduating. First, Lily and Tricia moved in so I’m not living with John Williams’ friends anymore. Then Durward moved back, and since then we’ve been hanging out a lot since he’s very good about making plans to do stuff. Tonight we went to the ICA for a First Friday party. The theme: denim dreams.

In a sudden change of heart I’ve joined a gym. I figured it would keep me out of physical therapy, which is somehow more expensive than the gym, and probably will continue to be unless Bernie Sanders wins the election. I’ve also realized that now that I’m 25, I’m supposed to be at my peak physical fitness, and the fact that I’m a slug probably bodes ill for the future of my body unless I do something about it.

My life is more interesting than it was in 2018/2019 but adulthood is still repetitive. I hate the feeling that I’m now in the phase of life that is “the rest of your life,” as if all I’m doing now is all I’ll ever do, even though hopefully that isn’t true. Hopefully one day I’ll be independent, creating work for my own base of clients or better yet myself and my audience (wherever they may be).

Some questions for you:
-Did you move out of Boston?
Are you still a designer?
-Did you ever finally actually make a youtube channel?
-Did going to the gym give you abs and did you eventually lift your air conditioner?
-Do you still keep in touch with your college friends?

The last letter I got that prompted this asked if I got off my butt and got a life instead of obsessing over comics 24/7. I’ve gotten a life, but now I have no hobbies that aren’t related to my career. So my new question is, do you have a new hobby? One that you care about and are invested in?

Hopefully you’re inching your way to emotional fulfillment and the world hasn’t ended.

Cheers (because I’m that kind of emailer now),
Amelia

Crazy to read a letter from a version of me that thought COVID wouldn’t last more than a few weeks. If it looks like I’m referencing another letter, it’s because I cut that one for length (it’s not that interesting and includes a list of very random references that would be inscrutable to people who weren’t in a specific corner of Tumblr in 2015). This letter makes me feel really glad that I’ve outgrown a lot of the specific insecurities I had at that time. That daunting feeling of suddenly being in the wide open space of adulthood and having to take control of your vast future while simultaneously wondering “Is this it?” has worn off. And I’m doing a better job of balancing work-work with other hobbies. I haven’t quite gotten the right balance of overall busy-ness though (I seem to always either have a ton on my plate or be burned out).

This is the new letter I’ve sent into the future. It’ll reach me in 2029. Remind me to not look back on this post so that I can be surprised when it comes:

Dear FutureMe,

Hey. It’s 2026 and I’ve forgotten to write a letter to myself for the past 6 years. Oops.

To answer a question from my previous letter, yes, I did move out of Boston. I live in New York and have been here four and a half-ish years. I’m a graphic designer still, have had a full other full-time job and also left that job to freelance full time. I’m living in NYC on my own dime and have a creative career. I also have a cat. And a girlfriend. That’s basically all of my dreams.

To answer another question about exercising, I definitely fell off when the pandemic was in full swing. This is something that I’ve been thinking about increasingly, how to get back into a good routine of exercise. I’ve realized in the summer I tend to walk around the city a decent enough amount to feel ok but in the winter I usually hunker down, which I probably shouldn’t do. I’m looking for a social way to exercise in the hopes that it will help me stick with it through bad weather.

When you last wrote, you were afraid of being in the large chunk of your life that’s “the rest of your life.” now that I’m six more years into “the rest of my life,” I’ve realized that life has seasons regardless of if it’s segmented in phases of school or not. The part of my life when I lived in Somerville is different from the part of my life when I worked corporate in Bedstuy is different from the part of my life when I left the 9-5 in Crown Heights. Even the beginning of my freelance journey was different from what I’m doing now.

Speaking of now, I do now have hobbies that are not related to work. Many of my hobbies are creative still, but not all of them are so closely related to design. I’ve returned to knitting, a middle school hobby, this time with the aid of Youtube Channels that can teach me how to make things that are not rectangles. I also enjoy linocut printmaking, calligraphy, and am finally, after many years designing a font. I play dungeons and dragons. I volunteer with an indie music org, a turtle rescue, and a climate organizing group. I’ve had enough people tell me “oh you like volunteering for stuff, huh?” to recognize volunteering may also be a hobby for me in its own way. At times I think my life is the most robust and interesting it’s been since college. I think leaving my job has given me the time and space to make it so, even if I’ve taken a big pay cut to do it.

I’m 31 and it’s crazy that I feel younger than when I was 28. Maybe it’s that freelancing allows a freedom of schedule that is more similar to college than the corporate world. Or maybe it’s because I’m drinking the specific flavor of NYC Kool Aid that lets everyone age and reach “life milestones,” like owning a house and settling down, much more slowly. Either way I’m enjoying it.

I think my biggest question to you, future self, is have I kept it up? Have I grown more? Have I outgrown the once-every-three-months existential crisis about my career and whether it’s right for me or be eaten by AI? I signed up for a Type Design class to combat a feeling of creative stagnation and it’s working now, but how long does the feeling last? Are you perpetually signing up for courses now? Gone to grad school? Are you diving deeper into what you already know or have you gone back to casting the widest creative net and trying to learn every creative discipline under the sun? I haven’t started that Youtube Channel but have YOU?

How are your friends, aside from steadily getting married? After 10+ years with the college crew, I assume they’re still in your life, but what about the newer friends you’ve been making in NY? I hope they stick around too.

Please let me know if you won 2026 Bingo,

Amelia

If I’m still using Substack in 2029, I’ll report back then. But for now I hope you enjoyed a glimpse into my past selves.