A letter to my future self ✉️

The New York Times newsletter suggested this morning that you should consider writing a letter to your future self. It’s a way to see who you are now and then some day look back at who you were, what you once believed and where you want to go.

Halfway through my 42nd year, what seemed so clear about my future is often quite hazy. But when I look back at these words, some point in the future, I will have much more clarity. And I’ll be able to answer Edward Abbey’s most famous question, “Was it worth it?”

In some ways I would have thought by this point my life I would have settled down in a home and homestead. Had my own land, livestock, maybe a wife and family. But I like to travel, my freedom, my fires and my big jacked up truck. But looking back, probably many of those things will be gone.

I could have bought that house or many others I had looked at. But at least at this point in my life, I can’t imagine settling down permanently into some kind of typical plastic-and-asphalt cladded huse. I would love to live in the country and have livestock, but at this point I’m not ready to commute via automobile and be stuck feeding and watering livestock and shoveling piles of steaming manure and smashing ice-filled water through throughout the year. There are still so many places to see and travel to, I don’t want to have a permanent address.

Did I stay too long in Delmar, was I too wedded to my job, too unwilling to make changes that could better me? Was I too focused on saving and investing, focusing on developing my good paying career? Could have more opportunity been found elsewhere, even if it also meant passing up my good job? It won’t be clear back when I wrote this, but it probably will be today.

These are all questions that at some point in my life I’ll have answers to. And maybe some point I’ll read these words, and realize while I didn’t have perfect clarity now, maybe it was good to have freedom to do what I want at least some of the time and not adopt the suburbanite lifestyle that so many of my professional colleagues have done.