Eighteen Years Old

Dear Eighteen Year Old Me,

Greetings! You’ve just started college—that first taste of freedom out from beneath your father’s thumb and I know you have a lot of people telling you a lot of things. You’ve got college professors who come across as old and wise, and RAs and administrators explaining rules throughout orientation. You don’t necessarily want another voice of advice at this point, but given I’m you and I’m now just about two times your age, I think I’ve got some ethos here.

There’s eighteen years between us, so let’s boil this down to eighteen points.

1) Keep up the writing. Trust me when I say that a lot of things in your life will change, but writing is one of the few endeavors that will consistently give you pleasure, and even professional enrichment. Don’t have such a big head about your talent, though. You’ve got a lot to learn, and you’d be better served to start listening sooner to your writing professors, in particular, instead of thinking they don’t understand what you’re going for. Sometimes they don’t, but they’re mostly right anyway. It wouldn’t kill you to build up better karma for when (spoiler!) you’re teaching writing to college kids yourself down the road.

2) Read more. Not just the books you’re assigned and not just over the summer. There’s more good literature than you’re ever going to have time to consume, and the sooner you can put a dent in your personal to-read list, the better off you’ll be.

3) You had a lot of fun writing that novel, senior year of high school. You’ll learn a lot from revisiting it, too, and it’s not that it’s a bad story. It’s also a fundamentally flawed book. You may still take pieces of it to use for other projects, but trust me that you ought to let the project go. Seven or eight drafts, and you’ll know it’s true. Reinvest that time in reading, writing more short stories, or at least drafting a different bad novel.

4) Don’t go straight to grad school after you graduate. It’s the choice you’ll make in the end anyway, but you’ll be better off not getting hung up on the idea. All that advice you get about getting life and work experience, and saving up money first is right.

5) Stop worrying so much about getting a girlfriend. You have and will continue to expend more time and emotional energy in wide-eyed crushes on women you’ll be too awkward to really get to know--time and emotional energy that would be far better invested in cultivating real relationships whether they lead to romance or not. Remember last spring, when you asked a friend rather than a prospective girlfriend to prom, because you wanted to have fun rather than putting a bunch of BS pressure on yourself. More of that, please.

6) When you do make out with a woman (and, yes, it will happen this year—congrats!) know that that doesn’t mean you’re going to marry her, or even have a relationship with her that ought to expand past that night. And that’s fine. You need the experience.

7) While we’re on the topic of your relationships with the opposite sex, a pointed reminder: they’re people. I know you think of yourself as a nice guy, and in many ways you are, but you still have had some pretty messed up ideas embedded in your mind about what the world (i.e., women) owes you. Remember to be nice even when--heck, especially when--things don’t go the way you wanted for them to. Your realization that not every woman is worth the heartache marks personal progress, but it shouldn’t take you as long as it did to learn, too, that a woman who doesn’t want to sleep with you is not a bad person.

8) Stop drinking so much Mountain Dew. Real talk: I still like it and indulge more than I should, but like many things in life, it’s better left an occasional treat for a long drive or a holiday than something you consume a two-liter bottle (or more) of each week.

9) Don’t worry about people finding out you’re a devout pro wrestling fan. Yes, there’s a stigma with some people, but most of the people who wouldn’t like you for your fandom aren’t worth chasing after anyway. You’ll make some good friends in college, and later on in an office job for the fact that you love wrestling, and in each case, will wish you’d come out of that particular closet sooner. You’ll even find something of an artistic niche writing about wrestling down the line!

10) You’re going to hit what seems like a sweet spot, of your first (relatively) lucrative office job around the same time there’s going to be a boom in the release of wrestling DVDs. Indulge some. Those complete anthologies of WrestleManias and Royal Rumbles will legitimately bring you joy, so go ahead and treat yourself. A few years later, though, WWE is going to roll out a streaming service. I know you don’t know what a streaming service is yet, but the central thrust is that it’s going to make the vast collection of DVDs you’ll be tempted to invest in more or less obsolete. Have some restraint.

11) Don’t be afraid to have dinner by yourself sometimes, or to spend a Saturday night in watching a movie you like. Taking some time for yourself doesn’t mean you don’t have a social life, and you’ll have more energy after you do take that time a little more often. There’ll be times when you can’t be on your own—take advantage of it when you can.

12) Make the most of time with your friends, too, though. You know how you feel about your high school buddies now that you don’t see each other all the time? That’s your first big dose of that feeling, but it won’t be the last. You’ll have your college friends, too, and friends from your summer gig and from every move to follow. No, your friends aren’t perfect, and some will be closer than others, but they’re people worth knowing, and its in knowing people that you build a life. Don’t take them for granted.

13) Start waking up earlier. You may never be a morning person, but it’s a good habit to get into before you start working full time, and you might be surprised how much you can get done in the early morning hours.

14) Invest in a GPS. The time spent not lost is well worth the investment.

15) You actually can grow a beard--who knew? Give it a few weeks, though, and until you have a few weeks to spend on it, out of the public eye, you’d might as well wait.

16) Start lifting weights, and don’t be embarrassed to do it in a gym. I know you think you should wait until after your metabolism slows and you fill out some, but you’re going to be waiting a while, and you can get stronger and more confident in your body a lot sooner than that.

17) Quit wearing the large and extra-large t-shirts. You’re swimming in them.

18) You like cats. Consider getting one.

Have fun and stay safe. But not too safe.

Yours truly,

Mike