I don't think my past self would be proud of me, but my future self would.

My future self is much kinder to present me.

Le Louvre, Paris, Summer 2018

“I don’t think she would be proud of me.” I still remember crying one evening as I said the words to a friend, or maybe it was only myself. A different kind of friend.

The question kept running through my mind.

Would me of a few years ago— Would even little childhood me be proud of the person I am today?

It was a few years ago that I sobbed the answer, no. At that point, I had been out of college for a few years. I had moved to New York City only to move back home again while the rest of the people in my program were getting apartments for dinner parties and meeting friends at bars for nights they wouldn’t remember and other interesting people with their interesting publishing jobs. And me? I was just… still here, applying to every job under the sun with no dear friends and maybe even more importantly, no book deal.

Waiting.

You’d think waiting would be a passive sort of activity, but it wasn’t. Or maybe, I wasn’t doing that right either.