#66 - Advice to my younger self on the eve of the last year of my 30s.

Life finds a way, or something like it.

I am always looking for advice. I will talk to a scientist, an astrologist, and a philosopher to help figure the same question out. And I am never looking for advice more than I am near my birthday.

My birthday reminds me of one of the most important people in my life (who I still don’t know how exactly to qualify without using the trite, mentor, which I think he would hate), who I last saw the day before my 33rd birthday. That day he said to me “you’ll be running the show by the time you’re 40.” I am unequivocally not running the show. In fact, most days I feel more out of control of my professional life than I ever have before. Less confident in my abilities to do anything. But I also keep an old email of his on my desk - it says “There is nothing that you can’t do. And you don’t have to do it all. Or do anything more than be who you are. You are a gift.” I miss him so much. I miss how many truths he held at once. I miss how his advice felt like an astrologer, a scientist, and a philosopher all in one.

But the truth is, a lot of people seek me out for advice. Which has always felt odd to me, but personally and professionally - I get hit up with the tough questions a lot. So maybe, this year I should start asking myself for advice, even if I don’t take it. I wrote this letter to my younger self during a writing retreat a few years ago. I stumbled upon it when I was looking for something else and on the eve of my 39th birthday, it made me cry out loud. It felt worth sharing because even though I was writing it to my 21-25-year-old self, let’s be honest - I still need to be reminded of nearly all of this today, and maybe you do too.

But of course, if you really need advice, all you need to do is refer to the advice that Baz Luhrmann gave to the class of 1999.

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Dear Lyndsey at 21 or 25 or 39, who’s counting?  

If you don’t remember the last time you went skinny dipping, it’s been too long. 

Try to remember to go skinny dipping more often - in fact, try to remember to do more things that make you feel like skinny dipping makes you feel. Dangerous in the moment, but innocuous in the grand scheme of things. 

These dangerously innocuous things are the only time you allow yourself a moment of calm. It is good to know this about yourself and not try to find peace in stillness, but know that for you there is peace in action. 

You don’t have to have to constantly be running toward something, but I fear you’ll never stop running. 

Take the time to clean your room, to breathe in fresh air long and hard enough to sweep out the tarter that society shellacs in the pockmarks of your brain. You have to find a way to let your gaze get back to factory condition.

I’m not going to tell you to floss your teeth more because you’ll never be that good of a grown-up, but take the time to floss your brain before the plaque builds up so much you can’t remove it without significant blood loss.  You’ll never be able to keep running if your engine isn’t oiled. 

Five minutes early is just five minutes wasted. Just be on time. You’re wasting perfectly good seconds on making sure others aren’t inconvenienced. Be respectful of others, but not at the expense of respecting yourself. Taking care of the small stuff makes the big stuff feel much better.  

When you have a chance to sleep on a creaky cot with rusty coils, revel in it. You aren’t old, you are young - you could sleep through the summer on a pile of rocks and still wake up and get an honest day's work done. Every time you hear the sound of the slamming doors of the neighboring cabins, immerse yourself in it. 

These annoyances are the circle of life - they are coming and going and coming back again. They are from comfort to discomfort and all of the other ether that sits in between. These reverberations will cost you hundreds of dollars at a health spa when you are older, but they don’t call it a slamming door, they call it a sound bath. An important life lesson is that anything can be monetized if you frame it correctly - even the unbearable sound of a solid pine door on rusty hinges hitting a hollow cabin full of tampons with applicators enough to fill a landfill and spiders who, like the girls it’s bunking with, has no bad intentions, just a lot of big feelings. 

You will worry about money for your whole life, it doesn’t matter how much of it you have. It will never be enough because you are constantly seeking - and in America, seeking costs money. A lot of it. You will have a therapist tell you that you have the soul of a hippie and the mind of a capitalist and he can understand how tricky it must be for those two pieces to live side by side. You will be happier if you spend your money on the risky things that make your stories worth telling. A new pair of sneakers won’t make your legs look longer, but the right dose of psilocybin in a house of mirrors might. 

Be young while you are young. You don’t have to follow your passion but don’t follow the money either. Take the path that’s a little uncomfortable, not the path that leads straight to stability. Take advantage of being pretty, young and so smart you’re dumb while you still can. 

Stop relying on men to validate your existence, validate yourself. Be young while you are young, Maybelline mascara is perfectly fine, as is the $2 bar of Chandrika. If you are going to continue to drink the volume of cheap wine and smoke American spirits, expensive skin products aren’t going to help. When you age out of these vices, you’ve aged into expensive skincare. But not until then. 

Your hair is beautiful the way it is, which is a good thing because it’s an impossible beast to tame. So don’t waste your money on that either. Also, you might take a cue from that wild mane of yours and act your age, not the age of a keratin-straightened head of hair. Live a little. You can live in a place that you don’t make a home. Don’t spend your money on filling your pantry, give yourself space for spontaneity. Your friends, and your peers, will be just fine if they don’t have you to feed them. You will still be feeding them in 20 years. You will never let them go hungry. Their bellies are full and will continue to be full. You sustain people with your presence, not your presents, invest in your soul, not your shelves. 

The best memories come from the photos where you are laughing, double chin and all. I want to be able to hear your twenty-year-old laughter when I look at pictures of you, I want to know what was making you laugh and I want to be there with you laughing along.

The innocence of laughter gets lost as the years move forward. It becomes ripe with cynicism and nerves and in the worst cases, ambivalence. 

Let me hear your sunkissed, beer soaked laughter, I’ve never wanted anything more. I was wondering if you like the way you look in those photos where your cheeks are gaunt and your lips are pursed? That was a trick question, I know you do, but I do not. You look boring, like a girl who cares about what she looks like, not what her spirit feels like.

I know you. 

I know how beautiful your spirit is. 

Let her out. 

Let her fly. 

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Chic Schmaltz La Vie,

LCF