the letter

I am currently working on a story called "The Letter" and the topic has brought up so many thoughts about letters - real letters, like on paper - that I have written over the last several years. Some funny, others poignant.

One that sticks out in my mind at the moment was a letter I wrote to myself (along with 25 of my classmates in one of my classes freshman year of high school). Our teacher assigned us the task of writing to our selves "four years from now" and she kept her promise to mail those letters the week of our graduation in 2000. I remember being unimpressed at what I had written, and I think I may have tossed the letter in the recycling after a quick skim, a semi-indifferent eyebrow-raise, and/or a forced chuckle.

The thing is, now I am wishing I had kept doing that - writing letters to my future self. I could totally use a refresher right now on what I was thinking during so many of those college and after-college moments when I made dramatic life-altering decisions on a whim. A friend told me she believes she did much more personal growing in her twenties than she ever did during high-school and early college years, and that makes so much sense. If I could have written a letter to myself on the day I graduated from college, now that would be one I'd want to read and re-read.