A letter from the past | Consuming Happiness Spring 2023 Letter to the Future

Today is August 7th, 2024 and I am writing this letter to you on the couch next to Archer. Archer and Bandit are just over a year old and still the best cats in the world! I am living in my second (and last) apartment in Madison. Currently, I am finishing up my summer semester at UW-Madison, and I am on track to graduate in spring as a junior with an economics major and French certificate. I just have this essay for Consuming Happiness and a final exam for Behavioral Economics and I am done! This has been the most stressful summer by far, but I am glad it is putting me closer to my future. I got married just over a month ago to Jake and it has been the best journey so far. He is also on track to graduate in the spring, but he is graduating from his master's program. We have been living together for almost a year and a half now. Every day is the best day with him. I am so proud of how I have grown as a human being. If someone would have told me three years ago that there is a person in this world that I never want to argue with, I would have laughed in their face. I am really curious to know how much more mature I become through my relationship with Jake in another three years. Speaking of the future, the next time I will read this will be August 7th, 2027. I will be 23 years old and Jake will be 26. In every letter I write to my future self, I like to make predictions and see how crazy stupid or scarily accurate they are! I predict we will be living just north of Denver, maybe around Thorton or Westminster. I hope it will be a house, but a condo is okay too. We just do not want to be renting anymore. As long as that is true, we will have a puppy! I hope it is a lab that is as calm as Skye. We will have ski passes for each winter! That one is not a prediction. I think we will have taken a few more vacations, and that is what we put a lot of our money away for. I really want to visit Alaska, Thailand, Japan, Italy, and Iceland. Those are for sure at the top of my list. I hope I have a job that I like pretty well, pays enough, and lets me live life to the fullest outside of a career. This is definitely the most challenging and fear-inducing part of my future right now, but I am trying not to overthink it. What happens will happen. Success to me looks like maximizing my experiences with Jake and my family. Success is being able to tell endless stories of my life adventures. That is all I want for my future.