A letter from Jul 24, 2022

Hi, You are 30 I guess. Congratulations for living so many years already (or as people say: Happy Birthday!). It's 24 July of 2022, a Sunday. Currently, you are seated in the kitchen of your uncle and aunt's house. Alone, because they went to Casal and they will be back tomorrow afternoon. You just wrote a letter to when you are 28 years old but you thought that it wasn't that meaningful. Because you didn't want to make too many expectations, because you are afraid you won't succeed. Moreover, you don't want to put your future self disappointed that you didn't make all those expectations come true. You just wrote the first page of your thesis yesterday. A thesis that is giving you too many headaches. You are disappointed already with it so you don't really want to write more. Because it didn't go as you wished it would be. In September you had a presentation about what your thesis would be about and if you look back, none of that was done. N o n e. That's why you didn't want to write that many expectations to the future (currently) you. I hope you had forgotten about this presentation because it is currently haunting me. I seriously hope I can save this master thesis and I hope I didn't quit science completely. I still want to understand adaptation and speciation and how the hell there's so much diversity on this planet. I hope you still find it amazing how we, the human race, are so different from a goldfish or even the amount of differences inside our specie. Differences are beautiful ! I hope that will still be something in common between us. In September this year you went to Açores. I still don't know what will we do there. What is going to be on that **** poster ? I'm starting to regret applying to that. Also in September, you are going to Paris. If you had asked your 20-year-old you that you would be studying in Paris for a month she wouldn't believe it. I hope there will be occasions like this one that you can look back and think "wooow you won't believe but XXX is happening / happened !!!". I seriously hope there's one episode like this one. It makes me want to live to know what will happen, you know ? Also just some advice ... please do your best to keep your current friends. They are all you have now. Even though sometimes it looks like you are talking to a wall... please keep on spamming them with your stupid jokes. Because I'm already regretting not keeping some of our childhood friends. Rita is pregnant right now you know ? And you just stopped talking with her. How cute would it have been if you still talked with her ? Anyway..... so please please keep your friends. Don't run away like you always do. Marta