Dear Future Me,
I don’t know if you’re reading this a week from now when you just want to sleep in on your vacation, six months from now as the winter creeps ever creeps closer and staying in the warm room sounds just oh so enticing, or five years from now doing whatever you’re going to be doing. (Or tomorrow, because you’re a narcissistic asshole. In which case, stop it.)
Whenever you’re reading this, today is May 1st, 2022. And you did good today.
After years of sedentary life, always complaining about gaining weight and feeling sluggish and loathing yourself, you took the first step (well, couple of thousand steps, as the case may be) towards not feeling all that. Well done! 👏
Yes, your numbers sucked. And your legs hurt, and it’ll be even harder to do it again tomorrow, and make it even worse. Because it will get worse, and you’ll just have to suck it up. You’ve spent the past months shifting your mindset from instant gratification to playing the long game. And if you stick with it, it’ll get better after it’s worse, and better and better after.
Remember this: the only thing preventing you from achieving anything? It’s you. As of today, you’ve been going on daily walks for three weeks straight. It might not have been much, walking, but it did have an impact — and now you’re ready to run. And you’ve been writing a new piece of poetry every day for ten days in a row. Again, might not be much, seventeen syllables a day, but it’s exercise just the same. After a while it’ll be more and more, until… well, until whatever else that’s next happens.
I have big dreams. Not complicated ones, but bigger than anything I’ve ever set my sights on. And I count on you to carry me (you) through it. You can do it, because if you can do it once, you can do it twice, and more.
And, if for whatever reason, you end up breaking our streak, don’t fret. The good thing about streaks is that they can be started again. The point I want you to focus on is that you already did all these things once, proving that you can. So if you’re in a rut, or fell off the wagon, just remember that the hardest part is the start. The rest is just practice.
Proud of you,
Past You
