If I only knew then…

I was never an avid poetry slam fan. I’m still not. However, George Watsky is my hero. I love a lot of his stuff, and if you’ve never checked it out, I highly recommend it. As a matter of fact, if you’re reading this blog, I’m going to force one of his videos upon you:

This is one of my favorite pieces by him. And no matter how many times I watch it, it makes me wonder what I would tell my 16-year-old self, or any of my past selves for that matter. Oh if I only knew then what I know now:

Dear younger self,

Stop worrying so much about what others are thinking about you. They probably don’t even know what to think of themselves. Worry about what you think about yourself and just roll with that. It’s a lot more fun and stress free that way.

High school is not your life. Your first job, nor your second job, which you might think you want to do forever, is not your life. It’s just high school. It’s just a job. It can easily be your life, if you let it. But you can also make it temporary.

Don’t ever stop doing what you love, even if you’re not that great at it. And if you are great at it, all the more reason to keep doing it.

Don’t stop putting 110% of yourself into everything you do, even if you don’t get 110% back. That’s who you are, that’s the type of dedicated person you are, and don’t ever half-ass it no matter how many times being that passionate bites you in the ass. It may suck to not get that kind of effort back from people, from hobbies, from jobs, from anything. But don’t stop.

You can be weird. You can be unique. You can be cliché. You can be whatever the hell you want to be. Just be it. In a few years, you’ll come to love an Avett Brothers lyric: “Decide what to be, and go be it.” And you will listen to that song on repeat just to hear that line and yell it at the top of your lungs. You’ll throw emphasis on it. And people will look at you weird. But oh well, they'll do that anyway, with or without your emphasized lyrics.

Signed,

The ever-changing person you want to be, who will probably have more advice for that person in a few years.

There are a million things I would tell myself if I could. But that’s why we change. That’s why we better ourselves instead of dwelling on the way we should’ve been. Learn from your past self. Move forward.

What would you tell your younger self if you could?