Dear Carrie,

I imagine you are sitting comfortably sipping a refreshing beverage on the deck with a view of a beautiful, floral backyard. The work week was challenging but rewarding. A smile flits across your face as you think about your healthy bank account with the recent addition of that well-deserved bonus.

I imagine your husband is joining you with a refill and small plate of fruit. He asks about your day as he releases the tension in your shoulders. You two discuss for the fiftieth time the prospect of having children. You know want them as you both love children.

I imagine your weekend will be filled with catching up on everything you have not had a chance to get to during the week.

I imagine you are happy and will continue to seek ways to enhance your life and the lives of those around you.

I imagine you are doing your share to make sure the environment’s report card continues to improve.

I imagine you are focused on continuing to eat well and exercise regularly.

I imagine the world continues to hold mystery for you, and you continue to have the desire to explore, learn, and grow.

I imagine you love hard and are loved well in return.

Ahhh, another weepy writing assignment. This prompt asked me to write a letter to myself 10 years in the future which was rather emotional for me. It’s difficult to truly imagine where my life will take me in the next year so I kept my letter very vague. At the very core of it, I just hope future me is happy.

Dear (Future) Carly,

I know you feel like you are behind but I promise you that when you read this ten years from now you will be so thankful that you did this it won’t matter how long it took you. I know you think that life has not gone according to plan over the last few years but as you approach 42 and I hope you have managed to put that disappointment behind you. I know you have always put others needs before your own but I hope you have learned to put yourself first occasionally.

When I envision life ten years from now I see you living in the city which you have always wanted. I see you working with people in a way that makes you feel like you are making a difference. Dogs, I see you surrounded by lots of dogs. Given your relationship woe’s its hard to imagine if you will find someone you want to spend the next 3 months with let alone 10 years but I hope you are happy either way.

I hope you take chances. I hope you meet new people. I hope you eat good food. And I hope you are happy, happier than you have ever been.  Keep moving forward and please always remember it is never too late.

Love,
(Present) Carly

Wow, Kyle. It has been quite a while. A lot could happen in 10 years and as a younger version of yours, I am excited to see where you’ll be. Do you know that business you’re starting? With Wes and Ethan? I sure hope it worked out as you wanted it to. I hope it grew to be everything you were striving for. I hope all the pain and suffering paid off. Right now, I feel very optimistic about it. The only downside is the amount of time I need to give this business to be successful, without actually having the time to do so. I am very scared that I may dive so deep there’s no choice but to hold my breath and hope for the best, but that won’t stop me from giving it my all. Regardless, you better be sticking to your values. Don’t forget why you started this business in the first place. I hope work isn’t keeping you busy from the realities in life. Don’t take away too much time from those you call family. This is a short life we live and if you choose success over all of that, you’re screwed.

Other than that…. 31 years old? That’s insane. In 2020, I remember watching a 60 minutes documentary at around 10 years old that said life on Earth would end this year. Think it had something to do with a meteor? Not sure but if you’re reading this 10 years later then I guess we are Ok! In 10 years I hope you’ve kept up with your friends. Diego was your best friend at this time, so he better be your best friend in 10 years damn it!

It is really hard to say what I want to say. Your life is so hectic now that it is very difficult to pinpoint where you might be. You could be in Denver, Colorado, still in Virginia, or somewhere halfway across the planet. If there’s one thing I am certain of though, is that you’ll find a way like you always do. Just don’t give up. And don’t forget who helped you get there.

Signed,

Your 21-year-old self

Do you know where you’ll be in 10 years? What will your life be like? I have an idea of what I’ll be doing in 10 years but I’m not 100% sure that things will go as planned. Below, I have written a letter to my future self describing how I think my life will be during that time. It goes like this:

Dear Tyra of the Future,

If you are reading this letter, it has been 10 years and you are now 33. You should be in the career field that you worked so hard for, an elementary school teacher (preferably kindergarten). I hope that this career is bringing you great joy and keeps you on your toes which I imagined it has. All those long nights and staying up doing assignments that you didn’t care about has paid off. I imagine that if you are not teaching in northern Virginia, ideally Fairfax or Loudon County, you are in another state further north with great pay on in another country. I know your students love you and although some days can be rough, you can’t imagine what it would be like to not be the teacher you are today. I want to commend you on the great job you have done making sure you are saving money to put away for a rainy day and you are paying your bills on time. How’s paying back the student loans. We’re you able to get them paid off yet? If not, I’m sure your husband is helping you take care of it. Speaking of husbands, I heard the wedding was amazing. From what I’ve seen, it was beautiful and your Pinterest boards that you started back in high school helped you to make it your dream wedding. The family loves your husband and his family loves you. You look great and have been maintaining your goals of living a healthy lifestyle and staying in shape. I’m sure your students and children help to keep you active. Especially at home when you’re running around playing with them. By the way how is mommy life going? I hear you have two children now and a third is in the near future. How exciting! How’s the new home coming along? I’m sure the neighborhood that you live in looks nothing like the neighborhood you grew up in. You have so much more space which is great since your family is expanding. Do you remember your first car? That 2004 Honda accord was cool for it to be your first car but all the work that had to go into it just to keep if functioning was a lot. Do you remember when your air conditioning in the car went out two summers in a row. You kicked out money to have it fixed the first summer and then somehow it stopped working the following summer. You were so upset and tried to ride with other people who had air conditioning as much as you could. Those were some rough funny times but now look at you. You might not have your BMW yet, which I’m sure you’ll have soon, but the new car you got after receiving your Master’s degree is so much nicer than what you envisioned. You have tinted windows and Bluetooth is already installed so you don’t have to use that Bluetooth transmitter radio adapter anymore. Every time you started the car it would say “waiting for pairing…paired”. You made due with your first car but this new one that you have is a great upgrade. I know that not everything has gone or will go as planned. You have probably lost some strayed away from a few relationships over the years but you have also gained some new ones. You are doing pretty well for yourself. You have a great support system around you who will continue to be there for you no matter what happens or where you find yourself. Always remember that you have overcame a lot and the best is yet to come. I can’t wait to see what else you accomplish in another 10 years!

Yours truly,

The 23-year-old me

I’m excited to read this letter 10 years from now and see how much life has changed and see if it matches up with my letter.

Hi Kara! It’s Kara. 10 years ago you sat down and wrote this letter to yourself. You’re going to talk about all of your hopes and dreams, but my true goal is that when you read this you’ll be happy. That could mean being happily married with 4 kids, or it could mean being single in a job you never saw coming with awesome friends. Whatever your life looks like when you read this, just know that if you are truly happy then that’s all I ever really wanted.

Of course, I already have an image in my head… every since I was a little girl I wanted to be married and a mom. Of course I expected to be married before I was a mom but life happens. If you’re reading this and you have finally found real, true love, I couldn’t be happier. This last weekend I went to Emily & Tomiwa’s wedding; I’m sure by now they have kids and are even happier than they are now. They are a true image of genuine love & happiness. I hope you find that.

Kids. The question everyone asks. At this point you have Ian who’s only 18 months and makes you think you’ll never want another child ever. But then he’ll curl up on the couch with you for the first time in months and cuddle while you watch his lawn mower video and you think more would be fine. Who knows what will happen, but I have a feeling you’ll cave…

As far as work goes, I think you’ll stick with teaching. It’s so hard and under appreciated, but the daily benefits of changing lives is unmatched. No matter how hard it gets, stick with it. If you need to take a breather, do it. But always come back with more zeal than before and keep changing lives.

No matter what, I hope you’re happy.

Dear Future Self,

In 10 years, I have a lot of ideal thoughts on how I want my life to be. I want to be married, with one or two kids by now. I want to be climbing the ladder at work,  on my way to being a CEO. But, being a marketing manager would be fine for 31. I want to have one large house with some land and a barn, and then one smaller house either in the mountains or a lake or the beach for vacation. I was to drive a white expedition and a black F350. I want to live near a big city and travel often. Maybe I will have lived in Italy again for awhile! Overall, I want my life to be happy, to be content, and filled with love.

Love,

Your Past Self

For this assignment I decided to write a letter describing what I believe my life will be like in 10 years from now. I chose this one because it would be neat to actually see what I thought my life would be like in 10 years when I don’t even know what i’m going to do with my life after graduation in December.

So, in ten years, i believe I will not be in Virginia. I think I will be in either Florida, Colorado, California, or Oregon. I would love to be in those specific places specifically because of how beautiful they are and all the environmental opportunities they offer as careers. I believe that I will be in my third  or fourth year with my environmental company, and loving it so much. Hopefully I will be hiking, and traveling in my spare time, so having a job that pays well will be a plus!

I don’t think I will have any kids because I plan on adopting when I am completely ready, and I do not see myself being ready anytime in the next 10 years. I think I will have a nice rental house that maybe me and a boyfriend are living in together. I think it will be full of art and at least two dogs cause they need to be friends with each other.

I will most likely still have short hair since that is how I love to live, and i’ll probably have a few more tattoos. Hopefully I’ve been to another country in the next 10 years, but not living there, I don’t actually know exactly what I want. I plan to just live my life day by day till the day I die.

After writing this I can definitely tell I don’t have my crap together and that this assignment was harder than I thought it was going to be cause who really knows what they want to do in 10 years.

Well to answer this question let me give y’all a little background on me. So what I am about to say probably sounds like a hallmark movie.

Well when I was 15 I met who Id later find out to be the love of my life. We have been together ever since and now we are engaged. We went to different colleges and we have been battling with long distance the past 4 years.

So in 10 years I see myself…

1. Married because I am engaged.
2. A kid or 2
3. Probably about to buy my first house
4. 3 dogs all rescues
5. A job with a company I love
6. coaching a softball team
7. Hopefully having a master degree
8. Alot of my loans paid off
9. not living in VA
10. being financially independent

In 10 years, I’ll be 29, so hopefully I’ll be married and if not married, at least dating someone who I will spend the rest of my life with. Ideally, if I’m married, we will be mad for each other because I believe that having a great significant other is better than having a life that is solely focused on career.

However that doesn’t mean I don’t wish for a good job because I hope to have a steady job working for a non-profit that supports my ideologies and ideas. I want to be able to do something I love by helping people in anyway I can, but I also want to do something that is constantly changing in how the mission is executed. So, I think a non-profit like Human Coalition would be a career in which I would thrive.

Hopefully, I’ll also have my own house, not an apartment, but a house that I can grow and live in. I want to be able to call somewhere home besides the house where I spent the first 18 years of my life. I’d also like to have a dog… probably a bulldog because I love them and my current bulldog makes me really happy.

Truthfully, more than anything, my goal in life is to be happy and satisfied with the life I’m living. I don’t want to live with any major regrets.

For my last assignment bank assignment this week, I decided to do the Your Hopes, Dreams, and Fears assignment. However, to relate it back to our class topic, I decided to do it on the superhero figure I created Morph Shadow as opposed to myself.

Dear 31-year-old Morph Shadow aka Melinda,

Here are your hopes:

• I hope you are thriving in the law enforcement career track. You go, girl!
• I hope you are happy with where you are in life
• I hope that you are able to find someone you love and that loves you for you, as well as Morph Shadow because she deserves love too.

Here are your dreams:

• You wanted to be able to share with the world that you are a superhero and use your powers for good. Did you achieve this dream? I really hope so.
• You dreamed of meeting other superheroes. You can’t be the only one in the world, right?
• You dreamed to find Sophia and reconnect with her. After all, you were best friends for years before losing contact in the foster care system.
• You dreamed of travelling, as you had never left the East Coast.
• You dreamed to have children and give them the life you never had after your parents passed. I think this dream was most important to you.

Here are your fears:

• You fear of being called crazy and mental for revealing your superpowers.
• You fear of never finding love because of your unbelievable alter ego.
• You fear that you will have children and not be able to raise them the way you dreamed.
• You fear of never being accepted by anyone.
• You fear of never getting out and seeing the world.

Good luck future Melinda. I cannot wait to see how far you have come.

Best wishes,

21-year-old Melinda