Dear “Future Me”……
I ran across a pretty cool website (okay, full disclosure: I read about it in “O”) and thought I would check it out and share it. It’s www.futureme.org and it allows you to send an e mail to yourself, in the future. I took the bait and wrote myself an email that will be delivered to me on Christmas of this year, but you can pick just about any date from tomorrow to 40 years from now. Like you’re still going to have the same e mail address in 40 years! Actually, for me, looking forward 40 years is entirely too depressing; the chances of that “future me” knowing my name is doubtful, let alone being able to read an email.
However, I was thinking that writing a quick note to the “future me” in 5 or ten years, might be kind of fun, so here goes:
Dear Future Me:
I bet you were worried that this note wouldn’t arrive, weren’t you? I know how you fret and fuss about stuff. Now you can relax; unless you’ve done something stupid in the last week or so, that has you all edgy and guilty. If that’s the case, you haven’t changed a bit, you old bag.
Let’s assume that you have walked a little further on your journey and are now rich, happy and at peace with yourself and the world. Fat chance, but just in case, congratulations on finally figuring things out.
I’ll bet all of the stuff that you were worrying and obsessing about a few years ago, has turned out just fine. You may have lost some people that you love. You probably don’t feel quite as spry as you did when you were younger and hopefully, you’ve given up and let the gray hairs take their natural course. Older women can’t really pull off the unnaturally dark hair, Miss Thing. I hope that you are treasuring your husband and your family every single day. For that matter, I hope that you’re grateful for your life and have forgiven yourself for past indiscretions; you don’t have enough time left, to waste it on regrets.
Okay, just checking in. I’ll write again in a few more years, so take care of yourself and stick around.
Your ….um….self.
Jane
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Who is Jane London?
I’m a retired morning radio host, turned a serial communicator:)
Some topics that I like to explore are astrology, spirituality, growing older, growing wiser, pop culture, not-so-pop culture and the human condition.
My husband, two dogs and two cats currently live in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, but that could change anytime as I tend to get restless.
I would love it if you’d sign up below for e mail alerts, pass along my blog to your friends and please comment on the posts; maybe it’ll lead to some great ideas for future posts.
Thanks to all of you who have signed up and have shared my posts. I really appreciate it.
Present Tense 
Hey girlfriend! What would you tell me if I had regrets over past events in my life? Probably something like, “Well, that WAS kind of dumb, but it’s over and done. As long as you can learn something from the experience then it’s worthwhile, so go easy on yourself.” We really can’t change anything that’s over and done, we can only hopefully learn from it so we don’t repeat the regrettable behavior. Be gentle with yourself girlfriend!
I did this once not via computer but an actual letter, for school. Everyone in class wrote them during first session, the TA kept them all and returned them at last session. It was somewhat of a profound exercise, I know a year doesn’t seem that long of a time period when thinking into the future but I couldn’t believe I had so little faith in myself when I wrote the letter and how far I had come in that one year.
Yeah, it’s kind of a cool exercise. I’m actually working on a letter to the much younger me, that’s even more fun! Lecturing the former you is kind of bittersweet:)
I’m gonna write to myself to quit procrastinating. If I’d just get it done today I wouldn’t have to worry about it tomorrow. Oh ya, and to remind myself to quite eating junkfood! It’s time already!