Question #6
“If you could speak to your 13-year-old self, what would you say?”
Dear J
There so many things I’d want to say to her, but she’d probably roll her eyes and not listen to me. So here are four things I’d say to her that I think are most relevant to her life then.
People will call you over-confident because you’re sure of yourself and your abilities. Do not listen to them. You are appropriately confident given your skills and talents. Self-deprecation and self-abasement will not serve you well. Being confident is not harmful.
Try all of the new things! You will try many of them, but there’s more that you will miss out on because of stupid reasons, such as not wanting to do it alone, not thinking you’ll be selected etc. Try anyway. As you mother continuously says, if you don’t ask, the answer is always no.
People will try to discourage and disparage you. This has everything to do with them, and very little to do with you. I know that you think that people criticize you because they’re trying to help you be better, and some of them are, but some of them are just haters, and they don’t even know that about themselves. Work on learning to discern the help from the haterade.
Figure out what you like. Do that. You don’t have to have a plan or strategy for how doing the things you like will be useful to you.
And a bonus one: Take more pictures! Take them every chance you get, with everyone, everywhere. You will think you look horrible in them, but that’s okay, you will still value having them at all.
