dear 27 year old me

Well first, hi. How are you? I hope you're well, happy, motivated, healthy, slightly but respectfully wealthy, kind hearted, as educated a 27 year old can be and ultimately a nice person. This is slightly odd for me to do, as I am literally writing to myself, but I've seen things like this everywhere on the internet over the past 2 years or so, which makes it a little less weird I guess. I hope you graduated university, sack that actually - did you ever get the grades to leave college?

I think (hope) you'll be well travelled at this point. Paris, Tokyo, Fiji, have you been yet? Were they as amazing as you'd expect them to be? You might be a mum, how weird. You might be married. You might be living across the world, miles away from Manchester, or ultimately you might be dead. Did Trump cause World War 3? More importantly, did Kanye 2020 actually happen?

As you (or I, I have no particular clue what pronouns to write this in) type this away, YouTube plays in the background, and it's 3am. Are you still as much as a night owl as you used to be?

At this moment in my life, I'm happy. I get sad because things are ending now, I have one year of college left, I'll be leaving home with all these responsibilities and probably little to no money, entering the big wide world. Did you ever stop being the biggest procrastinator on earth? I have so many questions that ultimately may never be answered. Isn't time bewildering, how terrifying is it to think that in 10 years time I could be reading this, a totally different individual with so many new stories and experiences and people around them, and I have no clue right now as I write this what tomorrow is going to be like, let alone 10 years time. Following on from that, did the lingering existential crisis ever leave or are you still contemplating the meaning of human exist rather thoroughly? 

I think right now I want to go into Psychology, possibly working with children and young adults, but honestly, I wanted to do English Literature less than 4 months ago, so only God knows what you're doing at this particular moment in your life.

I hope life hasn't been too hard on you, I'm sure it hasn't been. You have great family right now, great friends, everything is great ultimately. You're a smart kid, relatively, I mean I can call myself smart, right? I have a job, which I got in December 2016, and as of right now I've been there coming up to 9 months, I've been writing this blog since January 2017 and that's all that's happening as of right now, other than A Levels obviously.

Your favourite colour is Green. Your favourite animal is probably a tiger, but in all honesty, you haven't met a lot of animals at this point other than cats so, that has probably changed. You're vegetarian, too. Cool right? I wonder how many of those things are gonna be the same in 10 years time.

Other than that, I think that's all I have to say. If you're not okay, you will be. If you are okay, good. Stay that way. I hope this message fills you with a nostalgic sense of sitting at your kitchen table and causes you to laugh at the lack of responsibilities 17 year old Jess has, despite feeling like my life is jam-packed with endless plans and revision and all that other teenagery stuff.

Lastly, here's just a few photos really, to remind you of how (probably badly) you look at 17.

Byeeeeeeeee.

Thank you for reading,
J. I. Smith x