Dear Future Self…

Dear future me,

I hope you’re doing well—I know I definitely am! I’m writing this letter to apologize for any inconvenience I may have troubled you with. I would like to start off by defending my past actions as completely justified, because as you will see, particular circumstances called for them. But since I will overlook your sullying of my name just this once, I would also like to extend my deepest apologies for…

1. Losing all those pens and erasers (let me know when you find them!). And also the left sock—wait, left or right? Oh well, just that missing sock I keep wondering about. And also the sanity we left behind when entering high school—I can’t shake the feeling that the empty Hudson staircase haunted by the ghost of a thrice held-back senior definitely had a hand in this.
2. The unread emails that will never be organized again. Hm? Did you ask if I can recall all those emails from college admissions departments about demonstrated interest? Haha, funny you should ask since I’ve been avoiding the ever increasing heap since sophomore year began! Well, I’m sure wherever we ended up, it’s quite alright.
3. Awkwardly responding to social interactions, leaving you with the cringe moments that will live rent-free in your head at night, like that time we replied “Good muffin” to a stranger on the train. Did you already forget about that? Sorry for bringing that up again. 
4. Shoving every piece of paper into that one beat-up white folder with its corners nearly broken off and its pockets falling off despite the fourth round of glue. Which probably explains why I misplaced the really important essay due next period that’s worth 97 percent of my grade. Maybe not writing everything down in class had something to do with that? I mean, do you still have that poor folder? Did you really want me to torture it until it’s within the last few plastic threads of its life?
5. Forgetting to charge our phone and using too much data on the train, which may or may not have led to our phone shutting down in the middle of a cram session before finals. I think it was actually because we were procrastinating a month-long project into two hours of stressed-out work the night before that we forgot to charge the phone. Just a hunch, but maybe it would have helped if we didn’t save files under random names like work(1)(1)(1)(1)(1).pdf. We really got to stop doing that.
6. Opening up our phone and automatically starting to doomscroll and then exiting out of YouTube shorts only to horrifyingly find our finger being moved to the Instagram icon by alien forces beyond our control, forcing us to watch two hours, 13 minutes, and 46 seconds more of reels. That one was definitely out of our control, okay? Like that time when we watched a 30-second YouTube video from Google Classroom and somehow lost three more hours of our life. There’s something about the air on this planet, I swear!
7. The favorites bar that’s stashed with hidden treasures but without the map. In my defense, I need those for future reference. Which is also why there’s still 73 tabs open; they have a use, I promise. Who knows when someone might ask me to show them the earrings I bought off Etsy a year ago? Or the middle school project (that I’m still really proud of)? Or maybe the not-so-convincing conspiracy theory about ghosts controlling people’s fingers?
8. And promising “I’ll do it tomorrow,” which really meant “probably two weeks past the deadline” (this article is only two days past the deadline, so we’re definitely making progress. Wait, that reminds me, I’m also sorry about writing that article about the stuff we failed to do).

I hope you’re not angry with me—I wrote this article to put a smile on your face. Though I guess writing about our imperfections isn’t really helping… Anyways, I still have a chemistry test tomorrow that I haven’t studied for (and maybe four English assignments way overdue), so I’ll be on my way in just a few. But I pinky promise that even though we may have to ride out some rocky waves in the future (or just you, I guess!), we will still end up where we need to be. Maybe the plan won’t work, but it will work out.

Just leave it to your future self and live in the present. Binge-watch that show, munch on your caramel popcorn, and chill out—the us in 10 years has our backs!

See you in a few years,

Your past self