Thursday, July 17, 2008

Dear Young(er) Me,

I've finished it! (For those of you not keeping up with the detailed minutiae of my life, I'm referring to Rebel Angels by Libba Bray.) And in finishing it, I wanted to hang on just a bit longer and so scanned the Readers Group questions and the Q&A with Libba Bray. Ms. Bray seems like a very cool chick, which supports my initial assessment of her as a very cool author.

One of the questions (I assume the publisher) asked of her was what advice would she give her younger self. This struck me as an awesome question and I immediately began to ponder my own answer to that question.

What advice could I have used back then (not so very long ago)?

Try harder to overcome your shyness, find a team sport you can get excited about, drink more milk, eat less candy, travel more, be more adventurous, more daring, floss, moisturize, don't waste your time trying to curl hair that is determined to remain straight, don't worry so much about what other people think, give yourself permission to just let some arguments go unargued (my family will never believe I included this one), squeeze in a couple of writing classes, assert yourself, learn to dance, learn to play tennis, realize the sheer awesomeness of Target at an earlier age...

I guess that's it. I don't have many regrets. My life turned out pretty much how I hoped it would, which is pretty excellent.

What would you tell the younger you?

3 comments:

Sarakastic said...

I would tell my younger self to just say no to perms & be less judgmental about the guys I dated.

Stephanie J said...

Lately I've been thinking about how much I applied myself to my classes and the things we were learning while I was in high school and college. I wish I'd savored and appreciated those learning opportunities a lot more than I actually did at the time. I'd also tell myself that wearing the same sweatpants day after day, week after week is not a good fashion statement.

I think I need to tell my current self to stop obsessing and relax. Things will figure themselves out.

Melissa Walker said...

Great post. I love this idea... let's see. I would definitely tell the younger me to stop listening to other peoples' opinions and start hearing YOUR OWN.