I wrote myself an email a year ago (which you can do from FutureMe or Futuremail) when I was in a mood influenced from Seasonal Affected Disorder plus job and personal life disorder. While I’m actually no better off one year later, juding by my life’s highlights, for some reason I am just mentally in a better place, I care less about all the impending doom and gloom. To be honest, I didn’t even read the letter from PastJo, since I basically know what it said and I really don’t want to dwell on the negatives, as large as they may seem. Maybe I needed to give myself more than a year to get my situations in order. Maybe I’m just a more balanced person right now. The “fundamentals” of my life are strong even if some circumstances suck, and for that I’m happy.

It was pretty wild to have the past show up in my Inbox though. I’ll probably give it another whirl, maybe sending both shorter term and longer term messages to my future self, to see if I can inspire myself and just have an intimate personal record of my thoughts, unlike this here public record.

You can make the letters public on FutureMe. Some are quite compelling, but it’s also interesting to see that my problems are not unique, the same themes run through most peoples’ lives. I do sort of wish this existed when I was a teenager, so I could have, say, an annual letter to myself, like the state of Jo, or some such. It’s a neat idea as a way to publish your memoirs, if you have a good enough span of time to see how your voice changes and life experiences shape you over time. Now there’s an idea.