A letter to Lauren: Some words to my younger self
Hey, Lauren. It’s Lauren here. Except I’m now about to turn 23 years old and you’re only 14 years old. Alas, I’m going to talk to you about a few things.
The prompt for this blog post was to reflect on your journey through social media and digital technology. But, as you and I always like to do, we’re going to change things up a bit (if that’s okay with you, Hamza). I’m going to write this letter about the trials and errors of your pending life; your failures, your triumphs, and your insecurities. But trust me, you wouldn’t of found it without the digital world.
Wow, things have changed. Life happened — you’ve certainly lost, and holy shit, did you ever win. You’re going to fail and be rejected a lot; that just comes with the territory of your career ambitions. Oh yeah, your ambitions? You’re going to discover Mr. Baughman’s Communications Technology class in Grade 10, and from then on, you’re going to find your true calling in life — working within the feature film industry. From that, you’re going to meet incredible people along the way, and that’ll open opportunities to be found within film — all thanks to social media.
A couple years from where you are, you’re going to embark on your first trip to Los Angeles — and you’ll absolutely love it. You’ll visit Paramount Studios in Central Hollywood, where you’re told by your mentor via Facebook message to touch the pearly gates that so many of your idols (like Charlie Chaplin, Mel Brooks, etc.) have grazed their fingertips upon before. Being there makes you excited for the future, and you continue to visit there — so much that you get ahead of yourself and become impatient with the process.
Once you graduate high school, you’re going to move to Los Angeles for two months to learn at University of California, Los Angeles over the summer in a Screenwriting/Producing workshop. You found it online, and was accepted — all thanks to the digital world. Can you believe that? UCLA — your dream school. You get to work with the industry’s finest, and for the first time, you truly feel within your element. You so wished you applied there for your undergrad, but America has this SAT’s thing that includes mathematics, and like, you’re not very good at that. And it’s also incredibly expensive — so yeah, you made the conscious decision to not be $200,000 in debt at 19 years of age. That would’ve ruined you; especially with you’re impatience to pay it off.
Once you come home, you hit a bit of a slope. You didn’t get into film school at Ryerson, and you take the year off to work at a golf course. You can’t bear to go on Facebook and respond to friends about how LA went, because now you resent your dream. You’re vulnerable and insecure; something you’ve wanted and held dearly for so long is seemingly out of grasp, and the fear of complacency creeps in. “I cannot stay here forever,” you think. But you won’t.
You still keep on keeping on, and apply once more to Ryerson. You get in. You spend four years there, and you’re on the cusp of graduating. The friends you’ve met here are incredible; but you’re sad to see them go. Hopefully you make the effort to stay in touch with them on Facebook. Make sure you do that — you didn’t do that post-high school.
But don’t get ahead of yourself — there’s so much of life that you have yet to fill. Yeah, you’ve been doing that a lot lately — that whole impatience thing. After all these years, you still have your eyes set on Los Angeles. That did not waver — you’re one of the special ones to not lose sight of a goal you’ve wanted since you were 15 years old. You’ll find yourself looking back on the people you’ve lost, the failures you’ve encountered, and the inability to just enjoy the process.
Listen to your mother, and believe me, she understands, regardless of your argument of, “You haven’t wanted something so badly since you were a teenager!”. Trust me, she knows you better than you think.
Enjoy the process, Lauren. Because you want to be able to write a letter to your 23-year-old self at age 32 and have a lot to say.
