Helmet

Ten Years from Now

Ten years from now, in the year 2011, I will be twenty-seven years old. I’ll be older and hopefully wiser, and I will probably look even more like my dad than I already do, but at heart I’ll still be in many ways the same person that I am right now. I think I’m going to be a much better version of myself by then, so long as I don’t mess it up. Let’s step forward ten years and meet the Stephanie Thompson of 2011:

2011 Stephanie is seated at a very large desk in her office. She is currently working on her 3rd novel, a historical fiction story that takes place in Hollywood during the 1940s. She looks up from her work when she hears someone approach.

Dear Teenage Stephanie, have you any idea just how difficult it is to start and finish ONE novel? At 27, book one is still being completed! Interestingly, I did actually start that story about 1940s Hollywood (when I was a freshman in college), but at about eight pages in, I came down with a mixture of writers’ block and disgust at my plot, and subsequently deleted the whole story from my hard drive.

“Hi, younger me! I haven’t seen you around in ages . . . gosh, it’s been ten years! You won’t believe all that I’ve been up to! This is my new office that they gave me just last month. The library has been really excited about all the educational programs I’m starting. I’ve only been working here for about two years, but I plan to be here much, much longer.”

“Oh, you want to know about the photographs on my desk? Well, this is my husband and me on our honeymoon to Australia, where we went to the Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park and got to meet Steve and Terri Irwin. And this is us on our first anniversary, when we were living in Oregon. I was expecting our daughter Kathryn at the time. This picture here is her latest school picture. She’s finishing up kindergarten right now. That picture over there on the wall is of our twins, Julie and Megan, who just turned three. The baby, Michael, is almost eight...