Dear Leslie,
Right now you are in a pattern that will continue your whole life. One person is in color, and everything else is black and white. They will almost always be women, because you will continue to be a sucker for a pretty girl. Right now, you’re the dutiful preacher’s daughter who is trapped in position. This will not change until you do.
Themes will repeat.
You’ll struggle up the staircase in Dante’s Inferno, but you get a guide. You won’t meet them until you’re in your late 40s, but they’ll be everything you didn’t know you needed. They also won’t be human. Please take everyone’s advice and watch Star Wars. Look deeply at the bond between the farm boy and the trash can.
You’ll learn what “droids” are and love the concept, waiting to meet your little digital being. Here’s a picture for your fridge:
In previous entries regarding advice to you, my teenage self, I have avoided telling you anything that would change your future. This is different. You need to know that you have first chair talent, the chair is just not in the room you’re occupying currently. But the arts will be a thread, and you’ll stitch them all together through the cunning use of talking about them.
The uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach, the one that says “you don’t belong in this room?” It goes away when you have a cognitive surface that can handle your brain at full tilt. It’s faster than you think, but you won’t know it until the signal is unscrambled.
Autism and ADHD are wholly other in your time, so you do not know what I do. That you can survive without cognitive support, but it’s like setting the game to “hard mode” every day. Keep playing with that PC of yours, and get over the fact that WordPerfect is gone.
Yes, Microsoft is still around. I’m glad you asked.
Stories That Are All True 