If you could write a letter and send it to your past self, what would it say? Would you warn yourself of things to come? Assuage ultimately pointless fears?
I keep thinking of scenarios where i mess with the younger me, only to realize again and again that I am only messing with myself. Wouldn’t it be funny to see that kids stick that in the…. oh wait, no that would suck.
I think of warnings I could send, decisions i could have changed. Ultimately, though, every decision I made, every situation I found my self in, every opinion I formed became part of the foundation of me. If I change something I hate, I will change something I love. Then I won’t be me.
Perhaps I got a letter from the future saying don’t write a letter to your past, you will change things in a bad way. So I didn’t send a letter and rendered the need to receive a letter from my future unnecessary. But somehow the lesson stuck.

I don’t get enough good email. Don’t get me wrong, I send and receive literally hundreds of emails each weekday. Most of these emails are between Spoober, Jen, and I and are all pretty much just the same chatty topics that we have when we are together. Those are not bad emails, just regular emails. Occasionally one of us will offer up a gem, a haiku, a bit of gossip, a graphic description of their bathroom experience. I appreciate those, but I want something more.
I want sordid ugly confessions of childhood transgressions. I want secret sex fantasies revealed to me in confidence. I want hushed gossip about people I don’t know. I want to know what other people had for lunch.
Tell me where your fingers have been. Tell me where your fingers wished they were. Tell me about that time you snuck out and drank vodka at the park with your friends and vomited on the slide and feigned menstrual cramps the next morning to stay out of school.
Reveal to me what you want to do to your girlfriend on your next date. Reveal what you can’t do on your date. Reveal your food allergies to me.

On my desk I have a soccer trophy.
“Head of the Lakes Invitational
Champion – 1992
Girls – U14”
I also have 2 soccer patches. These things aren’t mine. I didn’t win them. To look at me is to know that I don’t play soccer and probably have not in years. Yet I have them, and people ask about them.
“OOOh, Did you play soccer?” “Did you win those?” “I didn’t know you played soccer!”
This is the perfect point to go into the “Duh! Of course I didn’t play soccer, you unobservant troglodites!”, but really I can’t. There is no reason to it, no sentimental value, just something to decorate my desk and invite conversation.
I do get a kick out of telling people that I never played soccer before though.

On my desk I have a frame. Tasteful, understated brushed nickel or something. Matting inside for 4 photos.
Top Left:
Jen and I together in San Antonio on the grounds of a Mission. It is February, overcast, damp, chilled. The grass is green and the trees are bare. I am always surprised by how green the grass is. I like this picture because we rarely get pictures together, we rarely invite other people along. My mom took this picture.
Top Right:
Chloe laying on the throw pillows on the couch. Why did I pick that shade of pink for my couch? Why green pillows on pink? The colors are bright, my cat looks healthy and happy. Grateful that I have a couch, that I can afford down-filled throw pillows, that my cat likes me. Don’t forget that the little things are often more than most people have.
Bottom Right:
Jen looking out the window of a Mission in San Antonio. She looks happy. Happier than someone who has been traveling across the country for 9 days. Happier than someone who knows they will be at work in 3. The wall behind her is plaster painted muted grey, looks like the background screen in school pictures.
Bottom Left:
Chicago. I go to Chicago 2 or 3 times a year to shop. I always take the same lame pictures, as though I had never seen the architecture before. This picture is taken from Lake Shore Drive. Buckingham Fountain in the front, Red Building behind, Sears Tower peeking from behind the Red Building. Overcast sky accentuates the bright red of the building. I always photograph that red building. Don’t know what it is, but the red is defiant, the red doesn’t care that it is just a plain rectangle in a sea of architectural wonder, it is red and it catches my eye faster than any other building in the whole city.