TODAY I AM TEN: A Letter to My Sixteen-Year-Old Self, After Blogging Across a Decade

Date: July 24th, 2020
Delivery to: July 24th, 2010

Hello, Younger Me. 

Remember every time you had to do that assignment in class - whether it was for an overly ambitious grade school assignment, or in an English class in January, at the top of the year when you'd just come in all pale and dazed from a too-busy Winter Break - when your teacher would have you write a note to your future self, talking about how you hoped the world would be after a year, five years, maybe ten?

First of all, spoiler, but I'm 26, and I've never seen a single one of those letters return my way. So there's that.

And second of all, I'm doing that now, but in reverse. I'm writing to you from the future. Invest in hand sanitizer and face masks.

Let's kick things off by talking about you. You are currently embroiled in the bitterly hot days of the summer vacation between your Sophomore and Junior years of high school. It's taken you until mid-July to recover from all that social interaction from the school year, which means it's now time to panic over attempting a complete makeover montage before you go back to school in September. (I'm telling you now, that in ten years, you will do nothing but gain weight. You will love yourself more in a size 16 than you ever did in a size 8).

Here's where you are: You know how to drive, but you hate it. You drink, on average, two Diet Cokes a day, but still more when you can manage it. Your parents still haven't agreed to let you own any personal electronics beyond your non-iPhone cell, so you spend every summer morning booting up the desktop in your parent's room to manually check in on a list of twenty or so blogs you enjoy.

(Don't worry: both a laptop and a Kindle are on their way within the next year, and your best friend finally convinces them to get you an iPhone before you go to college).

The North Face jacket in question, seen here on
a church retreat on 16yo Me.

You were a chubby, quiet kid, who was bullied for being chubby and quiet, so for the first two years of high school, you got dressed every morning in the same way, whether it was above 90 or just pushing 32: the same Vans shoes, the same Gap jeans, and always, always, your full-sleeve North Face jacket. Thankfully, by now, you have shrunk it in the wash so many times that it no longer hits lower than mid-forearm, and by September, you'll have to give it up for normal clothes.

Last year, that cute guy you sat next to all year in your Geometry class kept a tally in his binder of all the words you collectively said to him over the course of the academic term (Less than ten). Little did he know, you pour ink into journals repeatedly, year after year, in composition notebooks full of words, because you're addicted to observing and reflecting on the world around you. In a lot of ways, that's the only way you can make it all make sense.

(Good news: you have a documented record of all of the ways Mom and Dad unfairly punished you for minor transgressions, from the age of twelve up, to reflect on later. Bad news: your younger siblings will get away with far, far worse, with only minor retribution, and your parents will carry on with a stunning lack of awareness or sense of equity whenever you bring this up. Being the eldest will never get more fun from that period of a year or so when you were eight, and you got to stay up a half-hour later than your sister.)

But there's only so many journals you can fill. And you can only look at someone else's blog so many times in a day, refreshing every other hour to see if anything new had arrived, before you start to wonder what it would be like to publish your own. 

So, you did it!

Let's say you just hit publish on your first post. You chose from a limited selection of pre-set background themes, because you don't know HTML (but had Dad not gotten in the way of you signing into a MySpace profile while you were only eleven so many years before, you might have learned). It's pink and has hummingbirds on it, which isn't exactly you, but it's also not exactly not? You look forward to a day when you'll be able to change things up for yourself.

And you'll be pretty good at it, too. After ten years of writing and uploading to your own, invisible corner of the Internet, you'll be pretty damn good.

Here, poor precocious, terrified, frustrated and anxious Savannah, are the Top Ten Ways Blogging Changes Your Life: 

1. It became a space to call my own. 
You've got three younger siblings, two of which are still in elementary school, and if there's anything that you've learned by now, there are going to be few and far between things in your world that belong to you alone. This blog is one of them. You own it, you control it, you choose what goes in or out, and no one else - not even your parents, your teachers, or your siblings - have any say in the matter. It's all for you.

2. It empowered me to speak confidently on the things I like. 
As a little girl who took nearly a year's worth of fencing classes at thirteen because you were so desperate to find a way to be brave, there is nothing that will boost your self-confidence more than this blog. In college, you will write about Fashion, and find a love of The Bachelor, and when you graduate, you'll realize you actually love Romance Novels. None of these things make you dumber, or less worthy of writing about what you think are more "serious" topics. No one is getting in your way more than yourself, and this blog is going to help check your self-directed anxiety to the side.

3. It gave me a college admissions boost.
As it turns out, while the University of Washington will love your 3.9 high school GPA, and how you are a Daffodil Princess, and Editor in Chief of the school newspaper, they also really liked that you are self-motivated, determined, and organized enough to start your own blog. Go figure.

4. It provided a concrete reason to keep reading. 
For every friend in college who bragged that they "hadn't read a book for fun since high school," you will never had to feel that way. Not only will having a blog give you more than enough reasons to keep reading, but it will also provide a platform to inspire others to get back into the habit, too... especially when it comes to your first gig.

5. It helped me land my first writing job. 
College Fashion is a name you'll recognize, being that you type its URL into Google every morning for sartorial perspectives on your future. Little do you know, that you'll end up contributing over 50 articles, across two years, in a column that only gets more popular with your authorship... including bonding with people across the Internet about your love of Dune, Howl's Moving Castle, and more.

6. It helped me find my voice.
At a time in your life when you figure that the worst possible person to be is your own self, this blog helps develop a means of speaking that sounded true to you. While your writing style occasionally fluctuates in formality and diction, you're still very much a continuation of the person you are when you first started writing, and it's this blog that helps you find that path of evolution.

7. It gave me a way to track my writing development. 
Will you occasionally grit your teeth and moan when you read posts from back when you were your age? Yes. But it's the equivalent of macaroni art on the fridge, contextually. You've got so much room to grow, kiddo, and this blog is a means by which you can track just how far you've come. Besides, it also helps you keep track of the five times you absolutely smash NaNoWriMo. Exciting, right?

8. It gave me space to find comfort in writing. 
When you graduate late from college? When you fail two classes, and had to move back home, instead of staying in Seattle like you had originally wanted? When you feel alone and frustrated because you feel like you're no further towards your goals than when you were the age you are now? You'll tell the Internet. (A therapist or something would definitely have helped, but for now, it's been enough.)

9. It helped me clarify my focus.
At your age, I was still thinking I wanted to be a journalist. I wanted to write for the News-with-a-capital-N, whatever that meant, and feel important and acclaimed and up-to-date. Now, I know that's not my course of action... and neither is fashion writing, graphic design, copy-editing, or many other things I've been able to try out while writing for this blog. I am still at a loss for what I want to pursue in the greater scheme of my life, but with this outlet, I have a means of getting closer.

10. It became a platform for something bigger. 
Whether it was talking about the election back in 2016 and inauguration in 2017, or it was the first week of Black Lives Matter protests back in June, this platform will give you an outlet to clarify and demonstrate your perspectives on the world around you, in ways that help me articulate ideas that are bigger than just yourself. You might still feel like you're just shouting into the void, but I'm more confident than ever that what I'm saying matters.

So when your mom asks you, sweetly enough, if the reason you didn't date more in college was because you spent so much time reading instead, you're going to know that it was for a worthy cause. (And to be clear, you still aren't dating all that much nowadays, either.)

All the best, 
Twenty-Six Year Old Savannah. 

2010 - 2011 - 2012 - 2013 - 2014 (the first year I actually acknowledge the anniversary!) - 

2015 Part One / Part Two - 2016 - 2017 - 2018 Part One / Part Two / Part Three - 2019 - 2020! 

I celebrated my blogging anniversary this summer in the same way I have for the past five years: by treating myself to some new books! It's one of the only times in the year I allow myself to buy hardcovers, especially recent releases, and I was so lucky to find every single book I wanted on my list.

Come Tumbling Down, Seanan McGuire
The fifth novella in McGuire's award-winning Every Heart a Doorway series, not only was this one of my most-anticipated books of the year, but I'm not the only one coveting its gorgeous cover. I finally turned over the first three installments in the series to my younger brother this Spring, and he's been clamoring for more ever since. But he'll have to wait his turn!

Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel
If you recall, back in November, my National Novel Writing Month project had to do with reading Food Memoirs, as I was busy attempting to write selections of my own. Since then, I've only continued to lean into that concept... and while it's not a Memoir, you can find this title on pretty much any "Books with Food" list ever written.

The Tempest, William Shakespeare
The cheapest book on the list, and some might argue the most boring, as well. In a list populated with complex and interesting authorship, he's the one old white dude on it. But this year I've started swinging back around to reading ol' Shakesy-P for the first time since 2014, and I thought it was about time that I locked down a Folger Library copy of my favorite play.

Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America, R. Eric Thomas
Memoirs and Essays are one of my favorite comfort genres, and I've had this February release on my list since the start of the year. As a gay Black man recounts what it was like growing up as both of those identities in a Christian theology, in a suburban neighborhood, and contemplates what it means to grow up in "otherness," it's been heralded by many friends as a worthy read.

Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African-American Cooking, Toni Tipton-Martin 
Speaking of releases I've been looking forward to all year... this was the James Beard-award winner for American Cookbooks in 2020, and it's been hyped by an incredible amount of the content creators I love in the industry. Plus, there's shrimp on the cover!

Other things I did to celebrate the occasion: got boba tea and some baked goodies with my brother from 85C Bakery Cafe, cuddled the cat (despite the hurdle her sleepy noggin proved to be in using my trackpad), and enjoyed an entirely too-big Club sandwich from legendary local fixture, MSM Deli.

Thank you for spending ten years with me on the Internet. Without a badly-beaten-up laptop, semi-reliable WiFi, a pen and notebook, and plenty of books to read, I am nothing. 

Got any good ideas for the next ten years? Let me know, in the comments below!