I Wrote A Letter To My Future, Published Self

This post comes on the heels of the May 27, 2020 Unus Annus video.

If you’re not familiar with Unus Annus, it’s a YouTube channel launched by Mark Fischbach and Ethan Nestor, perhaps better known as Markiplier and CrankGameplays. The premise of Unus Annus is simple: the channel exists for one year and one year only, with one video uploaded each day. After that one-year mark, the channel and all of its videos are to be deleted and erased forever. No archives. No re-uploads.

The channel dies and leaves this world.

The idea comes from the temporary nature of life itself, that nothing in this world is permanent and everything is constantly changing and evolving.

I’ve always loved the concept of this channel and have been following it since Day One. It gives Ethan and Mark a chance to do things they don’t normally get to on their main channels, which are mostly devoted to gaming, and pushing themselves out of their comfort zones where possible and growing as content creators.

The most recent video (at the time of writing this post) is centered around making time capsules, with the guys collecting various objects reminding them of the crazy schemes they’ve taken part in along the Unus Annus journey. Before sealing their specially-selected-by-Amy lunchboxes, Mark and Ethan take some time to reflect on their time with Unus Annus in letters to their future selves.

Call me sentimental, but I found myself tearing up a little bit at this part of the video. Mostly because it reminded me yet again that this channel is only a temporary thing and something that will only exist as a distant memory a year from now.

The idea of writing letters to one’s future self is not unfamiliar to me. I remember doing it in elementary school as part of a class assignment, but nothing ever really came of it. It can be a great way to not only ruminate on where you are in life but appreciate how far you have come down the road, however long from now that may be. Even looking over some of my earliest post gives me that feeling of having grown. I feel like I’ve started to come more into my own as a newbie blogger and have started to find my voice.

So I decided to do something a little similar and write a letter to my future self. Specifically, my published self.

In this letter, I focus on where I am at specifically with Bound to the Heart and give myself a brief glimpse of my journey as a writer up until this point in my life. I finally worked up the courage to send my WIP out to betas and am admittedly a little afraid to read through their feedback because I’ve never done this in any official capacity. And if all goes according to plan with my next round of revisions and professional edit, I could very well be querying by the end of this year—which is perhaps the scariest part of all of this.

I’m not going to be sharing the letter to my future self in this post. Instead, I’m putting the act of writing it out there in case anyone else wants to take this up.

That said, the letter has been sealed with wax (shout-out to my Secret Santa at work for gifting me such a beautiful set!) and tucked away in my desk drawer, not to be opened until the day I am published.

Also if you are reading this while the Unus Annus channel is still up and running, I highly recommend hopping on over there and check it out because it’s been a fantastic ride thus far and it’s already more than halfway over.

Memento mori.