Jan
28th
2022
Sending... Sending... · 4:39am Jan 28th, 2022
A Message to myself, in the past, specifically somewhere around 2012-2013:
Hi! This is weird and an awkward format. I have arranged what I have to say in points below. They are not exhaustive. They are arranged in no order.
- In 2022, you have survived an epidemic that fundamentally changed society in weird ways. Luna is alive and you have a wife.
- In 2022, you’re a girl! Surprise! Well, the surprise is not that you wanted to be, but that it is in fact possible. In my timeline I take this seriously a few years down the line. Do us both a favor and start reading about being trans right now. If you want to do something about it after soul searching, when you’re ready and don’t know what to do to start, go to inhouse pharmacy and buy 200 bucks worth of estradiol, take 1 a day for a month and then go to 2 and stay on 2 for like a year. The only good clinic in MS will be Spectrum, which opens in 2019, so your best choice is going to be the informed consent clinic in NOLA. Starting sooner will be better for both of us. Advocate for yourself, switch to injections as soon as viable. Do us both a favor.
- Get screened for ADHD.
- You are going to lose friends you know now, and gain friends you do not know now. The ones you do not lose so much as fade from or lose touch with until its too painful or weird or awkward and you have nothing to say will be the worst. You will mourn an incomplete moment in time until it is a physical pain, and nothing will help, and nothing can, and no one will care. You need to accept this ahead of time, so that when it occurs you will be able to move beyond it. I cannot help you avoid this happening, because if I knew how to avoid it or to fix it, I would have.
- Do not reveal stuff about your interiority to people. If you must, be brief, nondescript, and do not try to be interesting or profound about it. Doing it in fiction is fine, do that. People don’t like it, they will either get confused/weirded out, or you will have a very brief but very intense friendship that will leave you burnt or empty-feeling. It also paints a huge target on your face for weirdos and jerks.
- I’m sorry, but in the transition across the gender binary, we lose our love of okra. It’s still good in gumbo, but we don’t like it anymore fried. Sorry about that. That is the one regret not related to having fucked up transition with smoking or through fumbling in DIY. Eat a lot of it for me, please. Fucking gorge yourself on that shit. Do it for me.
- Be vague and do not commit to labels regarding your sexuality. You will settle on being a woman. You will struggle to explain how your sexuality works and people will not like it every step of the way and it will be awkward and gain you very little. See point 5.
- If you study English Literature, you will hit a dead end and end up crawling terrified of the future from job to job and then into the gig economy. You will have no marketable skills and no way to go back and try and redo. The privileged upbringing will not reach past 2014. Do IT or marketing. Probably IT.
No, seriously. Look. I’ve constructed the list of pros/cons for you on abandoning Literature as a major for IT or some other computer thing:
Cons:
- You don’t care about it and don’t give a shit
- You’re awful at math and your brain just won’t cooperate
- Some bullshit about betraying your principles and following your passion
Pros:
- Money
- Survival
- Literature is a dead degree, nobody makes it, you are going to crash and burn
- You’ll learn everything you want to know writing fanfiction for ten years and by reading a handful of books, appended at the end of this missive. Save you some money
- The passion you have for literature will be mostly a memory in 2018 and you won’t even be writing by 2020. You’ll try and fail and try and fail. It’s not worth putting your whole life on the wrong course and IT will let you waste time trying to write while ALSO having money to afford internet and food.
- I cannot stress enough how much you will hate yourself for having made the choice to major in English Literature. There aren’t words to describe it. It’s a hate like AM. Look it up. Have no mouth and must scream style.
- You can maybe work on games one day? I dunno, man, don’t look at anything but money and survival. That is what matters here. Love and passion are for the rich.
- You learn this the hard way: The world is not good, and you are also not good. Don’t keep expecting it to be meaningful, because its not. The cringiest thing you will ever write is about how much you don’t like existentialism. The best thing will be the only good essay you ever write, in 2014-2015, and it will be about a queer reading of Dracula and it will be good because you care about it, its interesting subject matter, and because you want to spite a miserable, boring, bigoted teacher. Cherish the moment as I have told you, it is not worth staying in Literature that long.
- Stop obsessing about the Dark Tower. You’ll cringe about it and your writing will suffer for it. Which you’ll feel bad about.
- Stop smoking cigarettes you idiot. They’re bad, sure, but they also stunt your HRT and I have to have terrible, small, ugly tits because of you, you little shithead.
- Don’t go to waffle house as much in sophomore year, it stops being fun and turns into a habit for avoiding ennui and boredom.
- Okay but seriously on the IT/Marketing thing. If you can’t do either, drop out. Go to VoTech. Learn how to weld. Romanticize it if you have to. We had so many great experiences in college. And in 2022 you would trade 100% of them in for literally just a job. The spectre of economic struggle will make them all ephemeral and weak. Ties that bind you securely will later become ties that keep you bound to a miserable place full of hateful assholes. Mississippi is bad, give up on it.
- Submit Absolution to agents after you rewrite it. Then rewrite it again and do that again over and over until somebody bites. Make it a hobby. It’s less expensive than warhammer.
- Speaking of, in 2015ish you go to law school and fail out and its the worst year of your life and you want to die very seriously but you don’t, hurray, and when you pick up the pieces and move back home for awhile, you will end up taking up warhammer because your brother in law does. Imperial guard is a good choice, your instincts will tell you that. Make your first tank either a Gatling or a Battle cannon or a demolisher, don’t make it a fucking Vanquisher tank. You think you’re being clever but you aren’t. It’s such a fucking bad idea. It sucks so much donkey ass. You will be a fool. Finish fucking painting it. Learn how to water your damn paints down a bit. Don’t build a fucking vanquisher. Jesus. Still regret that one. It’s on my window sill, mocking me for how badly it is painted and how stupid its stupid gun is. Argh. I’m writing you out of existence, bitch. I hope you get Legends’d out of the 9th edition codex.
- If you end up going the way I go, and time is immutable, and you didn’t do the smart thing and change majors, you’ll get fired in 2020. Either move with the job before that point, or take the offered gov job. Save money.
- You’ll learn at about 26 that passions and interests and convictions do not fill your belly or wallet. Don’t build your life around trying to chase them. Survival is mundane, and boring, and not rewarding. “Rewarding” is not a category you should be caring about. It’s an idea for people who are lucky or blessed, and hon, you’re Blanche DuBois when it comes to luck and providence. Your passions will die, your convictions will bend, and your interests will change or wither. Build your life on awful boring shit that pays well that doesn’t make you work overtime, and suffer less. Many people have told you the opposite, and bless them, but they’re wrong and they will lead you into an awful world of begging Uber to accept your fucking insurance so you can make money.
- I’m sorry, you’re never going to outlive the weariness of Tolkien 210. It will ruin all wonder and all reading and writing and art for you. Sorry. Try not to dwell on it?
Addendum:
Here are the books that, once read, will constitute all of what you get out an English degree:
In Parenthesis, David Jones
All of the Metaphysical poets and Cavalier Poets and the 16-17th century religious poets
In His Steps, Charles Sheldon
Darkness Visible: A Study of Virgil’s Aeneid, W. R. Johnston
Knowledge of the Holy, Tozer
The WWI poets, give Owen a chance.
Prolegomena to Charity, Jean Luc Marion
The Conquest of Bread, Peter Kropotkin
Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense: The Response of Being to the Love of God, William H. Vanstone
Ways of Seeing, John Berger
Dracula, Bram Stoker
On the Nature of Things, Lucretius
Murder in the Cathedral, TS Eliot
Either/Or, The Concept of Anxiety, The Sickness Unto Death, Attack Upon Christendom, Fear and Trembling, Stages on Life’s Way, Soren Kierkegaard
Why Marx Was Right, How to Read Literature, Literary Theory: An Introduction, Terry Eagleton
Armed Joy, Desert, hell if you want to read Kaczynski, you’ll hate his guts but use the opening line for years cause it rips ass. But do remember Armed Joy
On Writing, Stephen King
The Art of Fiction, John Gardner
On Moral Fiction, John Gardner
Read Anne Rice and everything southern you can find. Pick Queer theory work at random. Try some about Dracula, it's good.
And that’s it.
Good luck.
Huh. This is quite profound, really...
Why not include the lottery numbers for some specific date say in 2013... Or heck, one lotto number per year from 2012 to 2022? Being independently wealthy would let you pursue whatever you want without having to take a job you aren't suited for.
5631828
1.) I don’t know how to do the lottery stuff
2.) lottery winners tend to have Bad Things happen, not because of The Curse but rather because a huge windfall like that tends to bring complications and isolation that would shatter 2014 me’s sense of self and the results cannot be predicted
3.) I would probably tell that version of me to invest 100 bucks in Dogecoin because besides being very funny I could also track the exact time to cash out with minimum danger and minimum investment. Also see GME, as I have data on it.
4.) the real question is the nature of what time travel does to causality and if I’ve done something wrong I would worry I would delegitimize the whole missive
5.) tbh I would probably cave and do it anyway
I WILL THROW HANDS
IT is doing a very poor job of leaving me with any mental capacity for hobbies or writing or anything. But it is doing the survival thing admirably.
I suspect that the real answer is shrooms. Continued reports as events merit.
5631829
Things I'd tell myself if I could send a letter to myself in 1987 when I graduated from High School.
1)The professor is always right, especially when he is wrong. If you correct Prof Kay, you will make an enemy and end up working your tail off for three C's that should have been A's.
2) Professors do research, not really teach. Sorry but your idea of becoming a prof to teach college students won't fly. And unfortunately most high end math is calculus based.
3) The programming world goes directly to Windows C/C++ and an Object Oriented paradigm. I know you like Pascal and OS/2 but they lose.
4) You think differently from other people. This is real, and will eventually be given a name (Aspergers). Don't expect others to think the way you do because they don't. It is not a bad thing, and isn't all that uncommon amongst people with genius level intellects. Note you never find a mate, or even succeed in going on a date in the current timeline.
5) While radon levels in the house are passable, the basement is NOT. You might save your mom from eventual lung cancer if you press to have this checked and mitigated. She is also allergic to suchicholine which is a common way they put people under. Don't let them use it on her.
6) Your father is selfish. Consider his actions and your optimal actions with this in mind.
7) Your right knee eventually has issues. Be careful with your right knee and if things go wrong, address it quickly. Your teeth have weak enamel and you have a hard time keeping the weight off -- watch these things.
8) Your graphics via modem Senior Project is sound. It is however too early to market and the school owns it if you do it as a senior project. Also artists aren't programmers. The interfacing and editing are as or more important than the efficiency. Make it easy for them to use and you might be able to make yourself a lot of money.
9) You have a tendency to overdo online games when they arrive. Be careful of that.
10) In junior year you get paired with a really REALLY bad roommate who actually wants you out and passively killing you isn't beyond his means. I know you got a horrible dorm lottery number but even live off campus if you must. Potentially find others to go in on a dorm number together if you can to sidestep this.
11) The game company QQP exists and is in Flemington. It is an okay place to work for only up until it gets bought out by ALG. That company goes bankrupt and they will steal all money owed to you and rights to what you made.
12) Silver doesn't stay $5- per ounce forever and When stocks fall from 14k they just keep going down all the way to 6k. Bitcoin eventually skyrockets. Apple, Google, and Amazon becomes huge. Cellphones become smartphones and take off. Ebay makes Paypal mandatory.
13) Your True name is [redacted].
5631833
I probably can’t do shrooms, sadly—ever since I ate an edible that was way too strong and forgot how to move and saw Ry’leh, I’ve been very worried about how boned I would be on psychadelics
This is one of the most depressing things Ive read in a while, because I can watch you lose hope. Heres a big hug. If you ever move to the west coast like I thought you did, and like to drive, lemme know Ill hook you up with a great driving job for Thistle its only part time but its the best job Ive ever had.
I am happy yur a gorl and have a waifu tho
Anyway, internet hug to one of the coolest fuckers I know and am honored to call a friend. Lets write another dumb collab together soon or something.
5631840
different drugs hit different people differently. For example, I love Molly, but my tolerance doesnt seem to reset for it. The last two times I had enough to literally put some people in the hospital but they only got me mildly stoned
which sucks because its my favorite drug. And it is neurochemically (seemly almost, I obviously dont really want to try) impossible for me to get addicted to any substance outside of when Im actively on it. I literally have been up for 3 days on meth and then no cravings afterwards. I dont recommend that; I was just substituting for ADHD meds I was having insurance issues with. Also have dabbled with Cocaine, Oxycotin, and Xanax with no issues; Ive found the later two just made me sleepy and loopy, and cocaine is overpriced so I just consume it if offered for free at a party. Remind me to tell you why that is next time we hang out. Ask about ADHD meds and motivation.
Marijuana gives some people psychosis (and honestly as far as over dosing on edibles goes I think it has the highest harmless to still fucking sucks ratio. All but one of the worst drug experiences Ive had were too much edibles. The other was a story Ill tell you next time I see you at a con. Ask about NBombs and Shitty Bronies and Crispy Sparrow.
Anyway, I encourage you to with research, a low dose, a good headspace, a good setting, and a good tripsitter (I volunteer) to carefully experiment with other drugs, specifically acid, shrooms (not huge on them but some folks are), and molly.
Also I have a MtG friend I want to introduce to you. Her name is Amber and shes pretty cool
I'm with Tramp in wanting to give you a hug. Have Scarlet give you one for me? And here's hoping the letter from yourself in 2032 will be happier.
Can confirm.
you lost your love of okra? O.o
5631833
....you do realize that IT is a dying industry, right?
Also, what made you write this letter? I do think that it is a balance between passions and money, whats the point of having one if you don't have the other?
5631887
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5631887
HRT can sometimes change one’s tastes quite literally. My palette is a bit different now so fried okra is kinda nasty tasting nowadays.
A part of me wants to write one of these for myself.
TBH, I got a degree in anthropology and yet am a moderately successful cloud engineer now, so just follow your passion. Frankly, they don't care.
5631917
My several abortive attempts to learn how to do anything tech related have all shared the problem of me being extremely bad at learning how to do new things and having no structure for doing so. While possible, learning on my own is at best sort of a pipe dream for me.
5631926
My boss has an interesting strategy after an AWS ReInvent a couple years ago, where we had a talk with some of our vendors and wowed them with a rambling discussion on science and history:
Let her say whatever the hell she wants.
That is to say, at any casual vendor or customer event, he will prime a couple topics and let me take over for a bit, because my sprawling knowledge of diverse and esoteric concepts dazzles them and gets them invested in the conversation, then he takes over with business. Works especially well when they're drunk. I never drink, myself.
I've gotten more out of my anthro degree than any study of technical topics (but I have a natural grasp of programming and technology so it's not like I'm a slouch.)
Business is all smoke and mirrors.
5631937
Yes, it is, like War, a racket. A game, And I am keenly awful at playing. My mind does not work that way, it cannot despite my efforts. It is Not An Option unfortunately
"Fucking mood," as the children say.* That and bipolar. Have Past Cynewulf give Younger Me a ping with those when the wire hits. If I get the time machine going first I promise I'll pass this along.
Chin up. All waves return to the ocean, eventually.
* Pretty sure the children do not say this anymore, but young people move at the speed of meme and it's impossible for me, and Old One, to keep up. It's also more fun not to, then watch them cringe when I use their outdated slang.
5632009
I am learning the dangerous and forbidden art of saying “poggers” in correct situations. The Youths are alright. Mostly. We just gotta teach ‘em how to pirate shit properly. Once the Zoomers can hoist the black flag I shall retire in peace
5631892
You either have a very narrow view of what constitutes IT, an unrealistically optimistic idea of how well huge swathes of the economy have digitized, or think devs can be trusted to run anything without creating a nightmare.
5631840
I've done mushrooms once. It was a way sub-trip dose. Somehow, over the three or so years immediately after that, I found the wherewithal to lose 100 pounds, figure out that yeah, I have ADHD, and both go back to and finish a degree, when previously I'd sort of skated out of 4 schools in 4 years. The big difference being that that time, when I got myself in a hole, I didn't crumple into hiding in denial and avoidance mechanisms to not have a complete nervous breakdown--I successfully reprioritized, completed what was important, and recovered to good grades the next quarter. ADHD meds don't do that--not being as deep in a depression hole does that.
I can't prove anything with a dataset of 1, of course, but it was completely out of character for me compared to years of my life previously. I think the emerging science on psilocybin and mental health is going to continue to support this hunch, though.
It doesn't last forever. Unfortunately, my dad is the one that provided the last dose, so I dunno what next.
5632085
Honestly if I could do psychedelics without going fucking insane I would try it, because I have seen a lot of promising stuff.
5632102
Well, I didn't get any actual psychedelic effects. Thought it was a dud at the time. It was only a few years later when I was kind of scratching my head and wondering how I'd gotten my shit more or less together for a while that I considered the coincidence in timing. But you're certainly a better steward of your own brain chemistry than I am, so don't let me pressure you or any shit like that.
5632110
You’re not! I value the insight tbh. If I ever find myself with the ability to replicate that experience, I will try it.
5632075
Seriously this
Computers are going nowhere and they need to be maintained. Devs hate doing Ops work if they can get out of it. Ops is still hard and pays quite well if you ar good at it.
PS Cyne given how alike we are you can do IT :p
*hugs*
5631892
5632075
5632134
This is the weirdest take I've seen in weeks, and I'm on Twitter. It's almost as far from true as a contradiction.
5632075
Probably a mix of the three, and probably a bit of bad information sourcing.
Wait, I just realized AI exists. What do you think its effects will be?
I'm thinking a net negative effect.... I hope I am wrong.....
Then again, I might be panicking.
Or getting worked up.
I tend to do this sometimes, and I am sorry if I was rude or was inconsiderable at any point. I try not to be.
5632085
You ever done THC(Weed), DMT or LSA A.K.A Morning Glory Seeds?
5631892
I.T is NOT a dying industry!
I'm 16, a writer, teen parent, and someone who studies literature at school. I also work in computers and recently finished upgrading mine with a RyZen 9 5900X, RTX 3050, new ASUS gaming motherboard, new awesome RGB air cooler, new RGB fans, new 32GB RAM sticks and a new case due to my old one not having enough room for the GPU to fit and also because the back brackets that the GPU fits in will not let it fit.
It isn't a dying industry. For example, Linus Tech Tips, Austin Evans, TechSource, etc are still relevant tech youtubers.
5642164
None of the above, despite living in one of the arguable hippie capitals of the USA.
5642330
Not a bit of the devils lettuce? Not even a gram of the madness reefer? Shame and fie and stuff
5642355
Nope. Just... never bothered. I mean, I didn't really socialize locally outside of school from about eighth grade on, and I guess that's where the opportunity usually presents itself.
Also, no mystique. When I was young, my parents liked to drag me out to a sit down dinner with some regularity. One of the things that always stuck in my memory is that when I came home from that and went into the master bathroom[1], I'd regularly find a pop can on the toilet tank, empty, with one side caved in, a little hole punched in it, some strange burnt residue, and a weird smell. [2] My mom's youngest sister jumped into the grower program as soon as medical became legal here, lo these many years back, and holidays hosted at her house feature booze in the living room and kitchen and the third bedroom set up as a smoking room.
It's like when you live near a tourist destination and never go see it yourself. There's no urgency--there's always tomorrow, or some other more convenient time to do it.
[1] My dad started the house 7 years before I was born and you couldn't have called it finished until I was about 12.
[2] Don't ask me why they didn't just pick up some glass from any of the many local head shops that I remember definitely existing in the 90s. Part of being an adult in your 40s seems like it should be a freedom from having to improvise a water pipe.
5642706
there's something to be said for the artisanal quality of homegrown engineering. that thing said isn't neccessarily like, a good thing. just something.
Yeah its just... like, its rather unexciting eventually. It was, like alcohol and like every vice i have partaken in, a thing that was very fun to do with a group of friends on a brisk night with lots of time and no responsibilities the next day. Anything more and the fun of it all just sort of pales. How fun can it be to be high when you need to wake up tomorrow and be at work by 8:30?
marrying someone who has no vices aside from tea definitely helped me avoid being lost to the fried zombie zone.
5642706
there's something to be said for the artisanal quality of homegrown engineering. that thing said isn't neccessarily like, a good thing. just something.
Yeah its just... like, its rather unexciting eventually. It was, like alcohol and like every vice i have partaken in, a thing that was very fun to do with a group of friends on a brisk night with lots of time and no responsibilities the next day. Anything more and the fun of it all just sort of pales. How fun can it be to be high when you need to wake up tomorrow and be at work by 8:30?
5642909
Nothing is fun when work is the next day. I want to work 4-10s just so I have one more evening without that looming specter.
This was a very interesting read. I've recently started working after graduating from college, and I'm lucky enough that something I'm passionate about happens to make a decent amount of money. Though I could've chosen to go into comp. sci. and probably would make double the salary.
This essay is definitely quite the bleak outlook on life, maybe a bit too bleak. Are you okay? Some statements I feel are overgeneralizations. It's not that "the world is not good." I think the world is just full of not good things, and people do a lot of not good things. But there are good things to be found too.
Although I agree with you that you can learn everything you need to know about writing through fan fiction and hobby writing. A lot of artistic professions you can (and should) learn without any formal education.
Also how do you lose your taste for okra after transitioning? Is it some biological trait, like with cilantro tasting like soap for some people?
5645620
I have no idea why I lost the taste--one's taste changes over time... but also, there is some anecdotal evidence that one's tastes can change! I'm not 100% convinced about it but we'll not know for sure until someone can find a way to convince a bunch of suits to give them money to investigate it. I did read once years ago that cis women and men have different tendencies in their taste preferences, but am unsure if this is biological or cultural. Curiously, fried okra is 50/50 for me nowadays, depending on how fried, which you think I would love because the one change I KNOW is biological is that my eternal love of saltiness turned into a need for saltiness because that's a documented thing. It's the source of the antediluvian joke about trans women loving pickles. Pickles, saline, blah blah.
My experience is that life's joys are mostly temporary/fleeting and even when they do not, I am less convinced than ever that good and bad things cancel each other out. Not just in like a life way but in general. It works with like, tastes and stuff. But not emotionally always? Like, I got a manicure awhile back cause a friend gave me a gift card. It was nice, affirming, fascinating. The good feeling of it lingers. My nails are also way too long and typing is annoying now. These things don't cancel out, right?
The good things (cheesy fries on Mondays, coffee and pound cake, listening to a silly hyper man play 40K on youtube while I paint, read a nice book) do not really balance out or blot out the bad things (knowing about current events, trying to find a job that isn't a scam online, getting rather mildly hatecrimed in the parking lot). These things co-exist, they share the space. And were they in equal proportion I think I could live with this but it just isn't that way. At least, not for me. The good things are hard to come by, and are so dependant on luck and whether or not someone coughs on me or a factory line worker at the Jeep factory remembered to check the machine 8 years ago when my car when down the line. The bad things just hound you until you die. It's difficult for me to explain myself because when I start to laundry-list my way through stuff to explain why I think life is fundamentally bad, folks just get irritated. When I don't, they think I overgeneralize. It is perplexing. But fundamentally, I'm not sure how else to express the idea that things will generally be getting worse for my life time and that most of the things that happen that I experience will be unpleasant if not horrible and painful except to just say "life is bad".
I am pretty profoundly not okay, and there is not an easy way to fix that. I think it's nice that you asked, though.