Time machine

[bethlakshmi]

I loved safirasilv's so much, here goes:

What I would say to my 12 year old self:

1 - No, really, tall is cool. Believe your mother when she tells you can eat all sorts of crap at 6' tall and nearly 30 and not show it like the short girls do.

2 - College is as fun as the adults say. But for entirely different reasons than you or they could understand right now.

3 - Ease up on trying to be "cool". Here's the secret: being cool is just being a dork with no shame. The less ashamed of yourself you are, the cooler people will think you are.

4 - There are guys in the universe who think chicks that dig math are hot. Go ahead and revel in your dorky love of math - you'll get a cool job later. No Really.

5 - This crappy small, small-minded little town is not representative of the way the world has to be.

6 - You really will some day despair at your inability to spend quality time with all the friends that you wish you could see more often. There really are hundreds of cool people who like the things you like. They just aren't here, and you can't drive yet.


What I would say to my 16 year old self:

1 - Neither of your parents is totally right in the head. That's OK - nobody has sane parents. As crazy goes, yours are pretty good.

2 - By the time you go to college this horrible, horrible life segment WILL be over.

3 - College will be awesome - not only for what your mom says, but because magic fairies clean your bathroom, magic fairies bring you food, and magic fairies clean the dishes. Enjoy that. It will never happen again.

4 - Repeat items 1-6 above - I can see you still haven't figured those out. Your not gonna get shorter or less geeky - so learn to love it.

5 - These guys are just as lame and scared as you are.

6 - Feel free to drop French a year earlier. None of it stuck with you, anyway.

7 - Take industrial arts instead. Learn to use power tools. Trust me. I'm SO not kidding.

8 - Hang in there. I know life sucks, and there's precious little you can do about. You'll survive and you'll realize that these moments made you a very strong person. That's not such a bad thing.

Comments

[flyinglemurs.livejournal.com]

Wow that was such a cool post! And so true.
Boy, I sure would appreciate those magic fairies coming buy about now. I think I could probably use a whole squandron of fairies. And maybe as a bonus they can find the 2nd Sandman which the house seems to have eaten.

[aminahfiddler.livejournal.com]

I so agree with you guys.

Wow. I wish I know that stuff then..

Now I'll share something that I read on a school wall a couple of weeks ago.

"Fair does not mean equal".

It was like a light came on when I read this.

[snarkyman.livejournal.com]

Excellent advice.

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

Quite true. And that there are no guarantees in life on "fair", sometimes one wins bigger than one deserves, sometimes one gets hosed when one did nothing to deserve it.

29 years later, and I'm still working my brain around that one.

[aminahfiddler.livejournal.com]

I think the difference is how you think of things.

YEA I won a million dollars is hard to think of anyway but positive.

But, take something less obvious like I have a friend that had a fight with their house-mates. He keeps thinking how bad it is that he had to move. I keep saying be thankful that you had a place to go and you're not out on the street. So is that positive or negative? From my view it's a positive. From his, it's a negative.

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

True. Rather like my friend here in Boston. She just quit job that was underpaying her, expecting more hours than she was paid for, and refusing to get her health insurance. On top of that, her boss sounded awful.

She quit - which on one hand sucked - less money, no steady job, even less chance of health insurance. But on the other hand, was a good thing - no evil boss, no overworking, freedom of time to get better job, freedom to do contract work that pays more for less hours, freedom to start a business that may make her really happy.

So... what's fair? Is fair having a job that is mediocre, not awful? Or is fair having a job that is so awful that taking the risk to do something less secure is a viable option?

[aminahfiddler.livejournal.com]

I my rose colored world.

Fair is having the courage to do something that will make you happy.