A Voice from the Past

                It’s mine.

                A few months ago, my family found a letter in the house that I wrote to myself, with specific instructions to not open until August 10, 2014 at 12:15pm, at least that’s what the outside of the letter said, as you can read here:

Part of the address label for the letter I wrote to myself

I didn’t end up actually seeing the letter itself until around October 2014, but it didn’t matter too much. But I found the contents of the letter itself somewhat amusing. This is really what I was like ten years ago, because I actually wrote this letter to my future self. Because of my fascination with time-travel, it makes sense that I would do something awesome like this, though I believe it was actually for some kind of school project. Anyway, a photograph of the letter is included below:

The letter I wrote to my future self

Thankfully my handwriting then was legible, but if you can’t make it out it, this is what it says:

"Dear Michael James Newman,

                I am in 7^th Grade, I’m 12 years old, my favorite color is blue, my favorite movies are the Indiana Jones Movies, my favorite book Series is the Daystar Voyages. I am very artistic and I want to be someone who works with Movies or an actor. I have a Twin brother named Joseph and two younger sisters named Debra and Rachel. My Family has a dog named Bella and 2 cats named Toulouse and Whiskers. We have a pool with a diving board and a slide. My address is 425 Sycamore drive Exeter, C.A. 93221. Todays date is 8/10/04 right now it’s 12:15 PM. Well see ya later (when you Look in the Mirror!)

                Sincierly, Michael James Newman"

I’m not sure why I addressed myself using my full name; maybe I thought I would be calling myself something different in the future. 12 years old seems so young – I wasn’t even in high school yet. Blue is still a favorite color of mine but I wouldn’t call it my absolute favorite. I do still love the Indiana Jones movies (yes, even the fourth movie, which hadn’t come out yet at the time of the original letter). I have many other favorite books now, but I may someday go back and re-read those books, which I loved at the time. I still believe I am artistic, and I still envision myself one day working with movies in some capacity. I find it funny that I told my future self the names of my siblings; I’m not quite sure why I did that. Sadly, the note about the family pets is no longer true. Toulouse and Whiskers may yet be alive, but we never see them anymore. Our family now has three dogs: Polar, Honey, and Abby; and three cats: Paws, Oreo, and Arwen. I honestly don’t know why it was so important that I tell my future self that my family has a pool. It was also not necessary for me to include my home address. That’s still where I live (when I’m not at school), but I guess my past self couldn’t have known that. The note at the very end about seeing myself in the mirror in the future was particularly creepy, because that exactly something I would do. I almost couldn’t bring myself to look in the mirror afterwards, because doing so would fulfill my own prophecy.

I’m not sure why I originally wrote that letter to my future self; though I expect it was more as a cool, neat, time-travel thing, rather than a word of advice from my 12-year-old self.

I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of time-travel (I went on an extended tangent talking about it in my review of X-Men: Days of Future Past). Though I guess writing a letter to my future self isn’t true time-travel, because the letter travels at the same speed through time that I do. It would also not be considered time-travel for me to write a reply letter to my past self, because at the moment there is no way I could do that; I’m also not sure what the consequences would be if I succeeded.

Anyway, the main purpose of this post is so that I can have a link to it in my life-update post which I should be finished in the next day or so. I did not post the link to this post on Facebook, so if you found this anyway, congratulations! You are more of a stalker than I realized! Maybe I should have considered removing my home address from the letter when I posted it on here…