A letter for a summer that ended up changing my future for the better!
Dear 20 year old me,
Today, 8 years from now, you will wake up with the brightest of smiles. The day before a letter arrived for you, the one you thought would never make its way. You had given up hope and didn’t consider it would still be a possibility. But I see you. Working hard on your career and if I am not mistaken you have a new solo travel plan on the horizon!
Berlin, oh what a city… it will take your breath away. You will fall in love with that place so incredibly hard. You will find the beauty in the city’s ugliness, but to you, Germany’s capitol is the biggest display of an art piece you have ever seen. During that trip, you won’t know it until much later in life, but you will meet one of your dearest friends that is still in your life many moons later.
Actually, thinking back now, that summer was for sure a very formative summer of who you are today. You are at multiple crossroads right now wondering if you picked the right path with your career, switching from marketing to editorial, a jump that is very rare. But let me tell you, 29 year old you aka me is thanking you! With that incredibly difficult choice that was probably waaaaayyyy too stubborn for your own good, made a big difference in your future career. I can’t thank you enough for the hard choices you made for me, an older you.
Honestly, I can’t prepare you for the hard times that will come for you. Nor do I want to. Just take it as the news comes, feel every emotion, cause I know you are more than capable to persevere. You show it in your current choices, going out and meeting people. Keep doing what you’re doing and always prioritise travelling over anything else. It will be the key to a part of your future.
Speaking about the future, like I said at the beginning of this letter, 8 years from now you will have woken up with having got the best news in your entire life the day before. Do I even want to spoil you? Because at this very moment the hope is gone, but everyday you do have a constant reminder of the thing that doesn’t let you go. You know what? I will tell you, you need it since you are finding yourself on a crossroad too many.
Dear younger me, becoming an editor will become one of your greatest strengths. It will make you successful in your future career. You will pay part of your bills with it. But the best part is, it will pay for your name change!
In the upcoming months, after your trip to Berlin, you will find out how hard editorial is. It may even look like you don’t fit in that world. But even if you’re bad at it at the start, soak in every information you can get, your future will be thanking you. You don’t need talent or immediately be good at something to be great at something one day. All you need is discipline and oh yeah… that stubborn head of yours that always figures out a way to make it work. That’s exactly what led you to be able to change your last name. So one day, that career of yours you’re working so incredibly hard on, it will be under your name. Soon it will be almost a year for me and I only recently got used to seeing my own name in writing or hearing someone call for me. But it will always be a reminder how I kept on going with a very honorable mention of this very summer you are currently living.
It’s funny, while writing this letter I discovered something else that I almost forgot about. This is the summer that I am actually starting to make plans of possibly moving to a German speaking country longterm. In the future you will think about it even more, and you will end up living in multiple German speaking cities. Yes, you will fall head over heels over Berlin, but also a life you have been longing for, a life you don’t see yourself living with the current possibilities you have in the Netherlands.
All I want to say is, looking back now from the future to my past, this summer will be more important than I could have ever known. It touches so many subjects from finding a forever friend to meeting a place that feels so you that any other place starts to feel wrong to a career that will literally shape the rest of your life. I am actually happy that you don’t know what I know now. Well good thing then that this letter won’t be posted for another 9 years.
But even if you could read this letter in the past, I hope you know: be stubborn, don’t be afraid of learning even if you’re not good at it and always keep on moving. A way will always find you.
Love,
29 year old you
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