Dear Future Becky,

I hope that you are doing well. I know that as of now, I have big plans for you. Hopefully you went to one of those colleges that I love and find myself dreaming about from time to time. I'm so jealous that you are already done with the ACT and SAT. Those make my stress levels shoot up. It makes me nauseous to even think about it. Are you still sticking to my "no procrastinating" goal? That was one of my resolutions this year. This is the last piece of homework that I have to do this weekend. Besides the AP Chem magic show script, but that isn't going to take long. Impressive, right? Hopefully this new habit carries on.

Where are you living right now? I'm guessing not in Minnesota. I've never liked living in Minnesota. Maybe you are living in New York? Or Chicago? Or are you living somewhere totally random, like Nebraska? Either way, I hope that you are happy. I'm happy right now. I love being 16. I have concluded that this is probably the best age to be. I have freedom because I can drive myself around and stuff like that, but at the same time I don't need to worry about stuff like mortgage and insurance. Although I can't wait to be done with high school.

Oh yeah, did you ever get over your fear of other people's blood? I hate blood right now. Or at least other people's blood. Watching other people get shots and IV's gives me the heebie-jeebies. And considering that I want you, or me I guess, to be a pediatric pulmonologist, I probably had to have gotten past that in order to achieve that goal. Gosh I hope I got over that. It's making me slightly queasy to even think about it.

But if you didn't get past that, are you now an interior or fashion designer? You must remember how people laughed at you because that is so different from being a doctor, but I (We?) need to do what makes me happy, right? I can't go through life doing something that I don't enjoy. But this is Plan B. Pulmonologist is still Plan A.

Or maybe you are a kindergarten teacher? I love kids, and you probably still do. They are just so cute. It would be such a rewarding job to help them learn.

But really, are you happy with how your life turned out?

I always am thinking about my future, but now that I am typing this up and sharing my aspirations, it's making me a bit anxious. I'm still not fully sure what I want to be yet. I'm so indecisive! Good thing you've already chosen. Remember those shopping trips you took when you were a teenager? And how it took you 15 minutes just to figure out what color shirt you wanted?

 I guess I'm scared that I will fail at reaching my dreams and just settle for some mundane job that makes me unhappy. That thought scares me. Hopefully that doesn't happen. I'm not going to let that happen. I will try my best to do what I love to do and make something of myself. I really wish that you could write me a letter or something to calm my fears and give me some words of advice. But writing letters to myself is not as easy as it seems.

Wishing you the best.

16 year old Becky

P.S. Let's keep our fingers crossed that someone in my time or your time invents a time machine so that we can meet each other.