Happy New Year from a Late Blooming Writer
We buried a time capsule on New Year's Day, 2000...the changes and touchstone 24 years later
“I’ve always been a late bloomer and only now am I coming into my own…I hope this finds you happy, healthy, and living your dream.”
from a 2000 letter to my future self
Just after the 2020 new year, my daughter and I opened a time capsule we had created with her father in 2000 to celebrate the new millennium.
Our 20-year-old time capsule ready to be opened in 2020
I wrote about the time capsule in this blog post:
It’s almost time to open up the time capsule I buried with my family on the precipice of the 21st Century. When I broached the subject of opening it with my daughter, we talked about all the ways our lives have changed in the 20 years since we carefully packed it with things we wanted to remember. Our lives today look nothing like what we imagined when we sat in our off-grid California cabin and wrote letters to our future selves.
When we opened the time capsule in 2020, we were surprised by how little the trinkets meant to us two decades later. In another post, I described what we found in the time capsule:
“Mom, why did we pack all this junk?”
“I have no idea. What were we thinking?”
There were some old CDs, a cassette tape, a program from a middle school play that my daughter stage managed, our custom goth Christmas card, keychains, and Gidget the stuffed dog who was the ‘Yo Quiero Taco Bell’ mascot back in the day.
When my daughter asked if we should do a new time capsule in for the upcoming decade with our new partners, I declined. If that much had changed in 20 years, I wasn’t sure I could imagine what could happen in another 20 years. Or if I’d even be around.
We had no inkling of the shitshow to come in 2020. Our lives would be upended again.
Four years later, I’m retired, remarried, a grandma, and living the snowbird life I always dreamed. I’ve also recommitted to my writing by starting this Substack newsletter.
In the 2000 time capsule letter to my future self, I documented my early writing journey, and in a 2020 blog post I wrote:
Two poems were published in Unity Magazine in 1999, the first sales of my fledgling writing career. My letter talked about finally knowing what I want to do with my life…be a writer. Eight months later we would move from California to Michigan. Then life got in the way. Finally, 19 years after I wrote that letter, I reconnected with my writer self and last year (2019) I had my marathon story published.
When writing about my life at age 25 for an English 101 class at Mira Costa College, I wrote, “I want to pass hot-dogging down a ski slope when I’m in my 90s.” I thought maybe I could will my body to ignore the inevitable decline of aging. My arthritic joints tell me I’ve not been so lucky.
My letter included the following poem I wrote to my future self about aging:
Yield to the seasons of life.
Gracefully embrace the wisdom
of passing years, while ignoring
disappointments and regrets
in the past.Be thankful and grateful
for all that you have
and all that you are.
For in the end,
memories are all
you have left.A memorable moment ~
a memorable millennium ~
a wonderful life.Some words from my letter have never been more true. My letter ended with “I’ve always been a late bloomer and only now am I coming into my own…I hope this finds you happy, healthy, and living your dream.”
Indeed, I am.
I have to laugh at the items in your Y2K time capsule! Like opening up my junk drawer in my kitchen, eh? To find that letter, though, that was worth unpacking.