A letter from Kelley, last year

Dear Kelley, I am writing this to be delivered to myself (you) when you are 37, a little over a year from now. I just re-wrote the first sentence, because the original plan was to send it to you on your 40th birthday. But next year may be more useful, in terms of keeping you on track. Also, I’m just a little scared to think of where you’ll be at 40 and to wonder if you will have wasted all those years. Maybe I’m worried about that because I’m not feeling very good right now, even though I am very lucky and have a lot going for me. When I started this letter, I started to cry. I’m still heartbroken over Andrew. God, please tell me that you are over him by now!! At this moment of writing it’s been about six weeks since he broke up with me/you. I miss him so much, and still love him. I’m so scared that I won’t find love like that in my life again. I look in the mirror at my soon-to-be 36 year old face and I feel opportunities and time slipping away from me like handfuls of wet sand. So, okay, do you have love? If not, what are you doing about it? Good things usually don’t just happen on their own. You have to make them happen, or at least put yourself in a position to maximize the chances that good things will happen. Don’t give up. You CAN have love again. You’re only 37, for chrissakes. Are you making an effort?? I just started this great new job, with all the opportunities it holds, about 7 months ago. But I’m finally starting to really face the fact that research, though not without its rewards, does not inspire me to get up each day. But writing does inspire me. I have a fuzzy plan to use this academic job as both a springboard into a writing-centered career and a “safehouse” for that career. Okay, 37-year-old Kelley, what steps have you taken to make that happen? You MUST have the courage to achieve your true potential, and the wisdom to recognize the specific nature of that potential. Is the edited book coming out soon? Did you finish the work in a timely fashion (including your own chapters for it)? Have you been thinking how to court your publisher into sponsoring you for another book (one that you will write all by yourself), and what that book might be? Did you write those funny articles that you’ve been thinking about for several years, for submission to that professional magazine? Have you started to force yourself to do the scholarly work necessary to write something more general than a journal paper? If not, then get the hell started! You have a talent. Please, please, please do not waste it, and thus waste any more of your life than you already have. Have you remembered to be kind? Have you remembered to count your blessings, and to be grateful for your family and friends? Have you worked to lose that extra weight and keep it off? Have you been good about financial management and retirement planning? Has that fucking train thing started to happen, and is it ruining the peace of your house? Have you changed the filter on the furnace in recent memory? Cleaned out the gutters so your foundation doesn’t get soaked? Are you going to the dentist as often as you should? Are you using sunscreen every day? If “no” to any of the above, then get moving on it. This letter serves two purposes: to make me think, right now, about what is important and worth working towards, and to encourage you to keep on trying for these things, even when it feels like the lights are going out. Especially when it feels like the lights are going out. I hope your loved ones are well. I hope you’re healthy. I hope you’re happy. I hope you are remembering that you have to work to be happy, and finding the courage to do it. Love you, Kelley