I’ve started a tradition in the last few years where I’ll write a letter to myself at the beginning of the year, only to open it at the end. My 2016 letter was pretty sad. I don’t remember the details, but I felt impatient and dissatisfied with where I was in life.
By contrast, my 2017 letter is very serene and hopeful. At the beginning of the year I had a job, I was working on my pet history project (reading the Jefferson-Madison letters), and I was reading more than I’d read in a while. I’d gotten to travel to Russia and Paris and Wales, and Clay Jenkinson answered an e-mail from me.
Now, at the end of this year, I don’t have a job, I haven’t read a letter in months, and my reading has really fallen down a hole. I haven’t gone anywhere, either, unless you count going back and forth between Abu Dhabi and Sharjah.
It’s disappointing, for sure. I’ve been very frustrated with myself for essentially losing half my year to a job that turned into nothing, and not doing enough in the meantime. I have work related plans, but I keep putting them off thanks to chronic procrastination.
Honestly, comparing myself now with my letter from January 1st of 2017, it almost feels like I’ve regressed. And then I get to the last paragraph, where I gave advice to my future self. “You aren’t racing anyone. You aren’t behind.” I told myself to slow down, hang out with my family and friends and enjoy it.
That advice sounds counter-productive, but it’s something that I’ve noticed I’m more willing to do lately. I’ve been watching TV shows with my brothers, and getting to spend time with them in discussion and making plans. I play with my baby brother more often, and take an extra moment to pet my cats when they sit with me.
I have work to do when it comes to productivity, but I don’t want my new productivity to come at the expense of those things. Those are important.
I do have at least one other thing I can be proud of as this year comes to an end: it’s the 31st, and I’ve officially written 50,000 words this month. And that’s not even counting this post! Between November and December, that’s 150k words, and probably more than I’ve written in a year’s time previously. Now that I’m doing it, I love writing every day.
Tomorrow I’m going to write my 2018 letter to myself and look forward to all the new words that will be written, cats that will be pet, and shows that will be shared.
Daisy M. Hall 