Dear Me

[JC]

I thought this was great. 12 athletes write letters to their young selves.

http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/9418365/notes-younger-self

 

[LongTimeListener]

Aaron Rodgers has a nice sense of humor:

And if that doesn't work? The winning numbers to the $600 million Powerball in May 2013 are 10, 13, 14, 22, 52 and 11. Never mind. It's gonna work out.

A good idea all around. The Robbie Rogers one obviously will get a lot of attention.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

I like it.

It's a nice idea that is very well executed.

 

[Versatile]

Didn't Kia already do this?

 

[Songbird]

Didn't Kia already do this?

First thing I thought of.

 

[Liut]

First thing I thought of was Peter Ustinov's autobiography.

 

[imjustagirl]

Dear IJAG,

You're 12. You love sports more than your dad's friends. You can beat them in any trivia contest. You play baseball in the front yard, where the three trees are conveniently planted equal distances apart and forming a diamond with the corner where the driveway meets the front walk. In about a month, you're going to fall head over heels with Brook Jacoby, and will be mercilessly mocked by your friends who will grow up loving people like Jani Lane (spoiler alert: He dies) and Axl Rose (spoiler alert: He gets fat).

You'll decide you want to be a physical therapist. You'll cook up a plan with your classmate, who wants to be a team physician, that you'll work together and all that jazz. That lasts until you get to college, realize the pre-PT program involves a LOT of sciences you never took and don't understand, and you get a D- in your first semester chemistry class. You change majors. You had been sending ****ty letters to the school paper, telling the editors the liberal cartoonist and columnist were stupid assholes (while your liberal friend who started her own zine did the same about the conservatives). Every response was a variation on the same theme: "Thanks for reading. If you want to make a difference, you're more than welcome to come join us."

One day you will. You'll walk into the basement of the journalism building and you'll be assigned a baseball season preview story. You'll do sportswriting for three years before deciding journalism sucks and the hours are horrible and who wants to work every night and every weekend? Not you. So you graduate and then you get a job as a secretary in an equine insurance adjusters' agency office, typing up recordings of people dictating reports about impotent bulls and llamas struck by lightning and horses with colitis. And you know what?

It sucks.

So after a year, you'll get back into it. You'll start at a small paper, work there for five years, loving every second of it but never realizing just how much. You'll get the opportunity of a lifetime to make a big jump in circulation, responsibility and beat importance. You'll jump at the shot. You move to the east coast, living truly alone in a new city for the first time in your life. It's scary, but amazing. You meet people. You make friends, some of whom you're still in touch with today. But just four years later, you'll get a chance to work at ESPN. Of COURSE you want that, even though your love of sports has decreased somewhat. So you go, and while you like some of the people you meet there, it's not the dream you thought it would be.

Through your own choice, but impacted by your family's situation, you will move back south. You will give up day trips to NYC and the chance to finally attend a Maury taping (yeah, you'll be obsessed with Maury. Deal with it) to move six hours from your family. You'll buy your first house. You'll get overrun with rescue animals because you can't say no to their sweet kisses. And you'll find a job you love with people you love and you'll finally be able to sock some money away for a rainy day.

But you won't watch sports any more. Not even Dodgers games (don't ask).

It's all worth it.

 

[Uncle Frosty]

Dear IJAG,

You're 12. You love sports more than your dad's friends. You can beat them in any trivia contest. You play baseball in the front yard, where the three trees are conveniently planted equal distances apart and forming a diamond with the corner where the driveway meets the front walk. In about a month, you're going to fall head over heels with Brook Jacoby, and will be mercilessly mocked by your friends who will grow up loving people like Jani Lane (spoiler alert: He dies) and Axl Rose (spoiler alert: He gets fat).

You'll decide you want to be a physical therapist. You'll cook up a plan with your classmate, who wants to be a team physician, that you'll work together and all that jazz. That lasts until you get to college, realize the pre-PT program involves a LOT of sciences you never took and don't understand, and you get a D- in your first semester chemistry class. You change majors. You had been sending ****ty letters to the school paper, telling the editors the liberal cartoonist and columnist were stupid assholes (while your liberal friend who started her own zine did the same about the conservatives). Every response was a variation on the same theme: "Thanks for reading. If you want to make a difference, you're more than welcome to come join us."

One day you will. You'll walk into the basement of the journalism building and you'll be assigned a baseball season preview story. You'll do sportswriting for three years before deciding journalism sucks and the hours are horrible and who wants to work every night and every weekend? Not you. So you graduate and then you get a job as a secretary in an equine insurance adjusters' agency office, typing up recordings of people dictating reports about impotent bulls and llamas struck by lightning and horses with colitis. And you know what?

It sucks.

So after a year, you'll get back into it. You'll start at a small paper, work there for five years, loving every second of it but never realizing just how much. You'll get the opportunity of a lifetime to make a big jump in circulation, responsibility and beat importance. You'll jump at the shot. You move to the east coast, living truly alone in a new city for the first time in your life. It's scary, but amazing. You meet people. You make friends, some of whom you're still in touch with today. But just four years later, you'll get a chance to work at ESPN. Of COURSE you want that, even though your love of sports has decreased somewhat. So you go, and while you like some of the people you meet there, it's not the dream you thought it would be.

Through your own choice, but impacted by your family's situation, you will move back south. You will give up day trips to NYC and the chance to finally attend a Maury taping (yeah, you'll be obsessed with Maury. Deal with it) to move six hours from your family. You'll buy your first house. You'll get overrun with rescue animals because you can't say no to their sweet kisses. And you'll find a job you love with people you love and you'll finally be able to sock some money away for a rainy day.

But you won't watch sports any more. Not even Dodgers games (don't ask).

It's all worth it.

Your profound degree of self-denial about Punto is worrisome.

 

[imjustagirl]

Trust me when I tell you I deny myself NOTHING in regards to Punto.

 

[Uncle Frosty]

Trust me when I tell you I deny myself NOTHING in regards to Punto.

Punto or GTFO?

 

[LongTimeListener]

Dear Me (13),

Get a new haircut. The butt cut isn't a good look now and is going to cause untold pain in future years as you look at your high school yearbooks.

 

[JackReacher]

Aaron Rodgers has a nice sense of humor:

And if that doesn't work? The winning numbers to the $600 million Powerball in May 2013 are 10, 13, 14, 22, 52 and 11. Never mind. It's gonna work out.

That was fantastic.

 

[outofplace]

Dear Me,

I want you to approach every situation with this one piece of advice in mind. You will regret the things you didn't do more than the things you did.

I'd offer you more direct advice regarding women, which you desperately need, but I wouldn't want to keep you from where you end up. Maybe it will make things easier on you to know that you're going to marry well.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

Dear 17-year-old me,

Don't major in journalism. Become a dentist or a lawyer.

 

[novelist_wannabe]

Dear Me,

I want you to approach every situation with this one piece of advice in mind. You will regret the things you didn't do more than the things you did.

I'd offer you more direct advice regarding women, which you desperately need, but I wouldn't want to keep you from where you end up. Maybe it will make things easier on you to know that you're going to marry well.

Should I feel troubled that this is word-for-word what I'd write to me?

 

[JackReacher]

Can we write "Dear younger [name of SportsJournalists.com poster]:" stories?

Not that I'd write any, but they could be epic.

 

[imjustagirl]

Dear younger JackReacher,

Buy more pants.

 

[JackReacher]

Dear younger JackReacher,

Buy more pants.

Haha. Well played.

 

[outofplace]

Dear Me,

I want you to approach every situation with this one piece of advice in mind. You will regret the things you didn't do more than the things you did.

I'd offer you more direct advice regarding women, which you desperately need, but I wouldn't want to keep you from where you end up. Maybe it will make things easier on you to know that you're going to marry well.

Should I feel troubled that this is word-for-word what I'd write to me?

Probably.