Dear Brilliant, Older Me

• Sarah Lazea, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2022

So, future Britney l would like to inform you that, 2022 is coming to an end pretty soon and that 2023 is about to begin. For context, today is Christmas. At this time, people like to make cute videos titled ‘my year in review’ while others record themselves getting all sentimental about how bad this year was and how ‘they want to leave everything in the past’. And yeah, these things can be cringe, but weirdly, l enjoy watching them. Some, motivate me to make new year resolutions and others make me feel ever so grateful for my relatively drama free life, but l watched one this morning that inspired me to do something different… to write a future letter to myself.
l LOVE writing, but the strict rules put in place in the school environment about how and what to write about has made it lose its shine. I constantly think about if I am using enough imagery, if I’m going over the word count and if my grammar is correct. ‘You can’t start a sentence with ‘and’, it needs to be formatted properly’ and at the end of the day l hand in a heavily edited piece of work that has lost all of its amazing embellishments, which had to be cut out because of the word count. I’m sure that whenever your reading this you will still have this problem…or will you?
If l would be asked to make a 2022 review, l would be clueless, because l tend to get to the end of a year and think, ‘hmm, l feel like l remember nothing about these past 365 days’. 2022? Never heard of it. But seriously, it’s only after some deep thinking that anything comes to mind.
So, if l was to rate, this past year l would say a 6/10 and let me explain why. So, as any high school student, school makes up a large chunk of my life. I thought that having conquered year 7, year 8 wouldn’t be that much different. AND yes, l would say l was correct. The workload was decent, and while l did procrastinate quite a bit, l managed to get through the year handing pretty much everything in on time.
I’m glad to say l don’t even recognise the phrase COVID 19 anymore, and let’s hope that stays the same, but who knows? The last time l said that a string of lock downs literally followed.
You know your not a big music and arts person, so l will leave it up to future you to look up any huge break throughs.
So while this letter does have a problem, it does not have a solution. I’m sure Mrs Potter wouldn’t approve. Unless…future Britney has made a solution? I know starting a writing revelation may sound hard, but you have done it, right? I trust you would have.
Love,
Your cringy younger self, Britney
PS: You better not have let me down!!!