Hey Everyone! In today’s post, I’m going to be doing something exciting and scary at the same time. I’ll be writing a letter to my 30 year old self. In the letter I’ll basically be asking myself a bunch of questions. Some deep, some shallow. The exciting part is, I won’t be able to read this letter ever again, until I’m 30 so that I can answer the questions. Hopefully I’ll be able to share the answers here. It’s really scary to think about. Also, I do read through my old posts so I’ll have to make it a point to skip passed this one. I just hope I don’t forget I wrote this.

Also, I did something similar a while back called Dear Younger Self. If you want to check it out, feel free. Lastly, I encourage you to go ahead and write one to yourselves too. It could be fun in the future to look back to where you were a few years ago. So go ahead and do it then let me know if you do! It doesn’t have to be to you 10 years in the future. It could be 5 years or even less. It’s all up to you. I just think a lot would have changed in my life in 9 years. Enjoy.

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Dear 30 year old me,

Today is May 17th 2020, the time is 8:11pm. I don’t know if you remember where this idea came from but you saw it in a YouTube video and decided why not! I have a few questions I’d like to ask you if you don’t mind. I’d advise you to take a few deep breaths right now because writing this became very hard at this exact point. I also hope you’re smiling as you read this.

How are you today? Are you happy or are you sad? Are you hurting or are you alright? Did you ever learn to play the guitar or something music related? Do you still blog? Do you still write poetry? Did you ever try branching out and writing stories and things like that? Or are you still afraid of that?

Do you still not eat cheese? Do you still love coffee? Stop reading this and drink water right now. I know you don’t like water. What car do you drive? Is Instagram still a thing? Did social media change?

What about your heart? Are you in love? Did your heart break?! If it did, just let me know who we need to fight. I hope you know that was a joke. Are you in a relationship or are you single? I don’t know how to ask this but, are you married? Do you have kids? What happened to “you know who”? I really hope you know who “you know who” is because if you don’t then this is awkward.

How are your brothers? How is your whole family? Is everyone still alive and well? That was a scary question to ask but I hope everyone is. And your friends? Did you ever make friends apart from the handful that you had? Do you have healthy relationships around you? Are you a good friend? What is your relationship with God like?

Where do you live now? Are you still in Lusaka? Are you still in Zambia? What are you doing with yourself career wise? How did your university experience end? Like what was that whole phase of your life like? Did you get any more degrees after your first engineering one? Are you still in the engineering field?

I can’t believe I didn’t ask this earlier but when did “quarantine” end? How long did the pandemic last? Did the feeling of uncertainty you had during the entire period ever leave? I hope the pandemic didn’t last for a long time because right now, I’m sick of being home everyday. What was it like on your first day outside?

How is your hair doing now? Is it healthy? Is it growing? Did you ever get adventurous with your hair? Speaking of adventure, have you been travelling? Please tell me you have because it will be quite disappointing if you haven’t. Did you ever really get into make up and all that? How many dresses do you own? Right now, you only own 4 dresses that you almost never wear.

I’ll have you know that as you were writing this letter, you were supposed to be studying for a Mechanical and Electrical Systems test which you didn’t study for so I just hope that went well. Also, did you ever launch the other blog? The one strictly for books and all? I don’t know if you did because you talk yourself out of so many things. Are you still like that?

Finally, I really hope you’re happy and healthy. I hope everything you worked hard for came to pass. I hope you are the woman you wanted to be. The one you were meant to be. I also hope you let go of the “what if this doesn’t work” mentality and also let go of feeling like you can’t do certain things or you don’t deserve to be doing certain things. I know you’re killing it at whatever you’re doing. Don’t cry when you read this. Ignore that. I know you will.

Side Note: I also hope you figured out how you will respond to this letter but I guess you’ll cross that bridge when you get there. You should also know that I had a hard time figuring out how to talk to you. The tenses were so confusing!

Yours,

Wonani (at 21)

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That was fun to write. Again I highly encourage everyone else to do this. It doesn’t have to be written. Probably taking a video would be much easier.

Stay Safe, practice social distancing and stay home if you can.

Thank you for reading!

Love,

Wonani Xx