What Would 10-Year-Old Me Think?

I’ve thought about what I wished I could tell 10-year-old me, but I read this post and wondered… what would she think of me?

She’d be amazed at my being 34. Not that I expected to die young, but 34 just sounds old. I don’t think it is, but it sounds like it should be.

She’d like that I’ve seen a lot of places and met a lot of people, but she’d probably expect me to have had a family by now.

Mostly I think she’d be a little startled by how much I feel the same. Curious and confused and nervous and easily amused and even more easily distracted.

She’d be freaked out by the realization that people just end up places. You finish school and you have to figure out what happens next. You look to the people you admire and you learn that they didn’t really ever have a clue either. It’s a scary thing to discover. We all end up places – and we can be very happy there, and we can have worked hard to get there, but sometimes it’s luck, and sometimes it’s scary. Sometimes there are big mistakes and lost-feeling moments, and that probably doesn’t ever stop.

I’m glad I know that… but now that I think about it, I’m glad that 10-year-old me didn’t know that.