Dear Susan-on-12/31/99:
It’s going to get better. I remember being where you are–the boring and frustrating computer job, the sense of being trapped and stir-crazy, the growing suspicion that your friends don’t even like you, feeling most days like you don’t even like yourself. It’s going to get better. In a couple of months, UC Berkeley is going to accept you into that graduate program you applied to, and everything is going to change very quickly. By the end of the summer you’ll be living in California, in a lovely one-bedroom apartment with smooth dark wood floors and gorgeous airy light, an apartment you can only afford because it’s in such a bad neighborhood. You’ll live there for three years, and in those three years the garage in back will be burned down and your neighbor across the hall will be held up at gunpoint on your front steps, but you’ll also learn to grow houseplants in that gorgeous light, and you’ll be happy.
At Berkeley, they’ll teach you to be a historian, and you’ll love it. They won’t teach you to be a teacher, but you’ll figure that part out on your own, and you’ll love that too. It’s not all going to be good–you’ll be worried about money a lot, and you’ll spend a lot of time feeling like you aren’t good enough at what you do, but both of those are pretty normal for graduate students.
Before this year is done, you’ll have signed on as an editor with this new science fiction magazine. Being a science fiction editor is going to change your life as much as being a historian. Next spring, you’ll get talked into attending a science fiction convention in Wisconsin–you’re going to be suspicious, because that one time you went to Arisia it was so awful you swore to never go to another convention again, but that’s going to be awesome too.
Before this decade is done, you’ll have driven cross-country four times, and spent a total of seven weeks roaming around the middle of the country for other reasons. You’re going to make a lot of amazing friends. You’ll attend so many weddings that you lose count, and your friends are going to have some really awesome kids. The Red Sox are going to finally win the World Series, and then they’ll do it again. You’ll give up knitting and take up quilting, you’re going to get really into mystery novels, and you’re going to learn to make pie crust from scratch. It’s going to be a rough decade in a lot of ways–the next presidential election is going to be weirder than you can imagine, and that’s only the start of it. I don’t know that you’d believe the rest if I told you. On a more personal note, you’re going to lose both your grandmothers, and that’s going to hurt. But there’s going to be a lot more good than bad in the next ten years, at least in your life, and by the end of the decade you’re going to have a job you genuinely love. (Oh, and you’ll be living in New York. No, really.)
Everything’s about to change. Have fun. (Oh, and just so you know, that on-again-off-again boyfriend who you’re going to be so awful to at the Ossippee party tonight? In a couple of years he’s going to move to California for you, and in 2010 you’re going to marry him. I don’t know that he’ll ever stop teasing you for being so awful tonight.)
All my love, Susan-on-1/1/10
Posted Friday, January 1st, 2010 at 6:31 pm. Filed under: Uncategorized.
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Ah, this was such a great post. :)
Aw, Susan, this is an awesome entry! Well done, and so fun to read!
:) I think she did okay, actually.
Even if I’ll never even pretend to understand Red Sox fans.
So glad to be in this timeline with you.