seventeenth.

Write a letter to yourself in the future and stash it away.

I kind of chuckled when I saw this good deed today. It reminded me of a scene from The Office where Jim pulls a prank on Dwight and faxes him messages from "Future Dwight".

Dear Dwight,

Someone will poison the coffee at 8 am. Do not drink the coffee. Further instructions to follow.

Cordially,
Future Dwight

Then Stanley walks in the room with a fresh cup of coffee and Dwight lunges across the room and swipes the coffee out of his hand.

Hopefully no one poisons my coffee in the future. Good thing I don't drink a lot of coffee.

Dear Audrey,

It's currently the beginning of 2013 and as far as you are concerned that means a fresh start. 2012 was a doozy. Hopefully you read this now and things are very different for you. Hopefully this time in your life will just be a blip on the radar in the grand scheme of things. But I want to remind you of a few things you learned this year, lest you forget later on.

1.) You are stronger than you give yourself credit for. In the past the person you've been afraid of the most and believed in the least is yourself. There's no reason for that.
2.) You're not boring. You're not dull. There's plenty of unique things about you that make people gravitate towards you. You're incredibly creative. You have passions in your life and you're committed to seeing your dreams of becoming a full time photographer come to fruition. Don't let anyone ever convince you again that you don't care about anything.
3.) It might hurt, but all in all, just be honest. To others and mostly to yourself.
4.) You're intelligent. You may not have a college degree (hey maybe you do now...) but that does not define your intelligence and your ability to achieve success.
5.) People love you. Genuinely. We all make mistakes. It's part of life. But having made mistakes does not prevent people from loving and caring for you.
6.) You're a dreamer. And that's okay.
7.) You're faithful. You're patient. You're forgiving. So many times you could have thrown in the towel and handled things differently. But you loved. And you gave your all the best you knew how. Don't beat yourself up.

Love yourself the best you can and then love others until it hurts.
Audrey

"There's a wild thing in all of us." -Maurice Sendak