Step 1

This is my actual school picture from Kindergarten. I guess I wasn't being as inconspicuous as I thought. I got better at that as the years went on.

 

I've never been good at writing in my journal. I never quite got the point until recently. A journal is essentially a letter to yourself. When I read my entries from when I was a kid, I wrote them as if they were a letter to my grandma. I imagined myself reading it as an old man, reflecting at how insightful I was at such a young age.

It's as if I was trying to impress the older version of myself. I'm 30 years old now and if I could write a letter to my younger self, I think it would be the other way around. I would try to impress him with how much money I make and how advanced video games are in my time. I would apologize for my gut and the fact that the acne never really went away. I'd break it to him gently that we still don't have robot butlers or hover-cars. In fact, instead of having robots that act like people, we have people that act like robots. I'd tell him to write what you feel, not what happened that day. I'd tell him that the feeling of being uncomfortable in your own skin would not go away, but that it's OK because that's how everyone feels. And even if it wasn't, it doesn't really matter, and that not all grown-ups actually grow up. I'd also probably joke about the alien invasion, but I don't remember at what age I discovered sarcasm, so it would probably be best if I left that out.

I know a lot of people have a hard time recalling childhood memories so I'm going to post as many as I can remember here. The names will be changed, and the lines between what actually happened and what I imagined will certainly be blurred. Not because I want to make them more interesting, but because those lines have never been clear in my mind.