If I could write a letter to me

I feel the need to write. I haven’t been “blogging” lately, and I’m starting to get the itch. I like being able to take the thoughts in my head and externalize them, even if I’m the only one who reads them. I think status updates are to blame for the decrease. I’ve been turning things that could be a few paragraphs into two sentence blurbs for a status update.


So what do I want to write about? The other day, I had a rough one at work. I was driving home, all depressed and bummed out. I was thinking what would happen if someone showed up at my dorm room in the fall of 1997 with a time machine and said “hey, you want to see what you’re doing in 2010?” I’m pretty sure that my college freshman self, who at the time was probably watching Bewitched reruns on Nick at Nite while thumbing through his high school yearbook wishing he could go back to ol’ WHS, would’ve jumped at the chance. I was that screwed up at 18, thinking my best years were behind me.

So 18 year old me hops in the time machine, excited to see where I was and what I was doing. When the time machine stopped, and he got out and realized he was less than a mile away from the dorm he’d been sitting in, what went through his mind? Did he think he was still in college? Did he think that time hadn’t traveled at all, that someone had played a cruel joke on him?

Then he walks into the office, and sees me, at my cubicle, typing a blog on a social networking site and listening to THE EXACT SAME SONG HE WAS DOWNLOADING BACK IN 1997! I’m a good 50 lbs heavier with the head of gray hair that 18 year old me always knew he’d have at 30, but was still holding out hope that it’d hold off. He asks someone why I’m not working, and whomever it is tells him “because his job requires very little of him.”

I know what he’d be thinking right then. He’d be thinking “Holy crap, my best years ARE behind me! It’s all downhill from here!”

I was thinking this as I pulled onto my street. As I did, it sort of dawned on me. I started wondering if 18 year old Andy would take the time to look a little closer at the older version of himself.

Did he notice the wedding ring? Did he notice the picture of his son in the frame on the computer? Did he see the one of him and his future wife on their wedding day? Would he stick around long enough to see the modest but nice house he lives in, or the modest but nice car that he drives? Would he start looking forward then, instead of looking backwards?

As I parked the car and opened the front door, I heard Jonah yell “Daddy!” from his bedroom and before I even had a chance to hang up my coat, he’s tugging on my leg begging for me to pick him up. I give him a big hug, put him down and kiss my wife. And suddenly, it doesn’t matter anymore that my job isn’t all I want it to be.

What I really want is what’s going on in that living room right then. So buck up, 1997 me. Stop writing letters to the girls you had crushes on in high school, then throwing them in the garbage. Stop moping. You’re going to be happier than you ever thought you’d be. Quit feeling sorry for yourself, and get busy living.