7/100 (dear someday)

Dear future me*,

I don’t always like to think of you. I mean, I have enough trouble with present me. There’s so much I want to do and still haven’t done. There’s so much I wish for. There are so many ways I could be a better version of myself. And of course there are the grey hairs I keep finding lately (I am too YOUNG for that, I tell you). What I’m probably actually saying — what I’m realising even as I type this, future me — is that I have high hopes for you but I realise not all of them will be fulfilled.

When I was younger, I had a perfect picture of who you’d be, future me. You were going to have long straight locks (of a rich chestnut brown). You would be suave, confident, a sophisticated city-dwelling executive. Also you would wear a canary-yellow power suit with matching heels. Obviously you were gonna be one classy lady.

When I got a bit older, the picture of future me shifted a little. Future me was going to be a hippie type who wore ravelling sweaters in unflattering shades of green and did her hair in two plaits, who never wore makeup, and whose favourite shoes were gumboots. She would paint and draw and write things, and she’d chase hens around the chicken coop.

Present me is less sure of what future me will be, but funnily enough, present me sits fairly smack dab in the middle of my two earlier projections. If this says anything at all (and more likely it says nothing), it suggests that future me will be less about personality and individual style, and more about the series of choices I make between now and then.

So dear future me, I don’t care whether you wear canary yellow heels or gumboots, whether you have a favourite hairdresser or you’re a wash-and-wear kind of woman. I acknowledge that the grey hairs will probably increase rather than decrease (at least in reality, if not appearance; there ARE such things as hair dyes. Please don’t be disgusted, hippie seventeen-year-old self).

I want you to assure me, future self, that there will be a good man to love and children to love on, but I know you can’t make those kinds of promises and so I won’t hold you to them. Instead, future self, I’d just ask that you learn from what’s going on now, so you can be more of a person because of what happens to you. Be braver than current me. Be kinder than current me. And please, always be faithful. Cling to the rock. I’ll keep my end of the bargain.

Love,
your fanciful younger self.

*this post was entirely the result of a meme prompt left for me at tumblr by Hayley.

6/100 (a tentative love note)

Dear Queensland Summer,

I don't want to speak too soon; after all, it's only been -- what -- almost six years? But I think I'm finally beginning to like you. Don't worry; I'm surprised, too.

Please continue to be kind?

Yours in wary affection,

Danielle

5/100 (letter to a closing year)

Dear two thousand and twelve,

Dude. I feel like you've been hanging in the shadows a bit. One moment you're on the way, and the next moment -- or so it seems -- you're leaving. It's my fault, really. I should have paid more attention to you. I should have slowed down, stopped to look at you from a different angle, analysed you, explored you. Instead, I got caught up in living and you drifted by while I was hardly noticing.

I have to say, 2012, you're not my favourite year. We don't part as best friends, that's for sure. But we're definitely not enemies, either. There are things you failed to provide, but there are many many things you brought with you, too: opportunities for writing, learning, working, and being challenged. I'm especially thankful for doors that opened onto new chances to learn from clever people, and the privilege/burden/adventure of getting to do some brain-moulding of my own -- not wisely or well, but with gusto at least.

While spending your year, 2012, I let slip old habits which I'd once thought very important, and formed others that I hope might stick around a little better. Some friendships got shuffled around in the busyness of the everyday humdrum, and suffered for it. Other friendships -- some of them surprising -- blossomed and deepened into very cool things (it's always the unexpected ones). Still other relationships -- the long-term ones, the friends-forever ones -- grew solidly and well with only the much-loved, occasional watering and sunshine of face-to-face meetings.

2012, you answered some questions I hadn't even realised I'd been asking, some that had been floating around in the back of my mind and heart since I was a little kid. That was a gift I'm very thankful for. But the gift of the year -- your crowning glory, 2012 -- is the one you brought in September: a new nephew to love on and squish. Thanks for that.

I feel like you passed by unreported and unexamined in some aspects and I wish I'd had -- made -- taken more time to really look at you while you were here. But you're leaving now and I think it's for the best. You were good, 2012, but (and no hard feelings here) I'm ready to replace you with another.

Leave the door open for 2013, will you? It's soon to be shuffled in straight from the Timemaster.

Farewell,

Danielle

4/100 (letter to a tiny pink person)

Dear Seth,

At just three days old (or is it four? I'm not certain how to count these things), you are far and away the youngest person I have ever written to. But you are currently the youngest person that I love, and so it makes sense that I'm scrambling to translate that love into words.

You are my newest nephew. You came into the world with a minimum of fuss, and at the moment you continue in a similar polite vein. You are tiny, but you have big hands (farmer's hands? mechanic's hands? architect's hands? potter's hands?). You look startlingly like your dad, but you are also incredibly you, with a serious, thoughtful mouth, and a forehead with a few tiny crinkles in it. It's as though this new world is a puzzle you're trying to solve, and I guess perhaps it is, and you are.

I think maybe it's your name, Seth -- a manly little man's name, and an ancient one, too -- that has many of us already looking ahead to your future. You're so tiny and new, and I promise that we will let you take all the time you need to grow up; please don't hurry it. But in the meantime, we wonder about who you will become.

"Mitch, Dan, and Seth," said your aunty Andrea, tasting the sound of the three boy cousins' names all together in a group. It sounded good, and I imagined a trio of bold, cheeky young men who might distract the girls at church. Uncle Tain is already talking about how he will fish with you, wrestle you, and watch superhero cartoons with you. I, on the other hand, had this vision of you growing up to be a lovely paradox: an artist -- one who rides motorcycles -- is the picture that leapt into my imagination when I heard your name.

But guess what, Seth? You don't have to be any of these things. You've introduced yourself to us as a tiny bundle who honestly wants little more than to sleep and occasionally eat (though not much). Yet already there's a story about you and its pages are filled with amazing things. Someone better than any of us has written it; we're just here to read along and help you out with some of the words.

Be who you are meant to be, Seth -- whether that's a wrestling cheeky fishing artistic motorcyle rider, or a chef who reads poetry and wants to get his pilot's licence. If you love God and you love the people He made, you will be a wonderful, mighty man, and that is enough and plenty.

Thank you for coming into our world.

Love,

Aunty Dee

A letter:

Dear Self (and others like you),

The world is full of creative people, and the internet is like a full-to-busting library of all their work. Only, in this library you can borrow more than plain old books. Yes, you can also peek into other peoples' journals, open their sketchbooks, browse through their rolls of undeveloped film, and -- sometimes -- look inside their brains.

It's inspiring. Amazing. Mind-blowing. And sometimes it gets you down. You think that the way you see the world, and the way you interpret what you see, is nothing compared to the way they see it. What they do is wondrous and otherworldly, but what you do is mediocre.

Well, Self, I need to tell you something.

We've already established that you're not a genius and never will be. I'm sure you know that you've got a lot to learn. But let one of the first things you learn be this: what you do is mediocre to you just because you do it. Think about it. Of course you cannot look again through your own eyes at a work you've created as a result of what you see with those eyes. Of course it will all be familiar. Of course you will understand that about 99% of the world's creative people will be able to do better.

But none of that matters.

This is because God made you who you are, and because His work has value, the way you see the world has value. Oh, don't get proud about it. It has value because of Him, not because of you. And I'm not telling you to find yourself, because it's finding Him that matters. But, Self, please be happy being You. God made you You for some reason, even if you never get it. So be the best possible version of You, for His glory and smile.

Love,
Danielle