Dear future me,

In the past, we wrote letters with a fountain pen, the ink cartridges of which we kept in a special pouch. We never looked back at them, but that didn't matter. We saved them. I miss that time. I miss the sprints to the mailbox. I miss the envelopes sprayed with perfume.

The anonymous sender. The pen pal.

Writing letters, I don't do that anymore either, but what I still do is keep my diary. Faithfully, every evening, before I step into bed, I write a ‘dear diary’. Five years ago, I bought ‘one line a day’, where you write down what happened to you that day; I've been doing that for five years now. At the end of this year, I will have a collection of 1825 days. How cool is that?
We all have our daily struggles. Worries, sadness, or problems that we don't always want to share, but that would relieve us if we spoke them out loud.

A diary is then your great friend. The only downside of that diary is that we don't pick up that loyal friend quickly anymore. And that's why I want to come back to those letters. Because why do we write to someone else, but not to ourselves?

Recently, I stumbled upon the website futureme.org where you can write a letter to your future self. You then decide when and at what time you receive the letter. The website where you can vent your heart. Not to your best buddy, sister, colleague, or mother, but to yourself. Writing it down helps you see your thoughts about yourself clearly. It forces you to analyze who you are. What do you want? With whom do you want that? Writing a letter to yourself holds up a mirror and works differently than just thinking about something.

‘Dear diary’ becomes ‘Dear future me’. I am already looking forward to the day I can run to the mailbox. Oh no, too bad, the inbox. Because: 2018.