There’s a persistent pain in my left shoulder lately—I think of it as inflammation. Could be. Since I have a profound distrust of doctors, I have asked no one for a professional opinion. So it’s ibuprofen and stretching, and whatever home remedies I stumble across online. Always the wisest healthcare policy, to get your medical advice from YouTube.
The side effect of chronic shoulder pain (or chronic pain in general) that bugs me most is that it makes my sleep less restful. I don’t have trouble falling asleep, or even staying asleep. But I’ve always been a heavy dreamer, and I had a sleep study once where they figured out that I never leave REM. I’m constantly dreaming. And so, if I’m also in pain, that sticks with me. I don’t rest well. I wake up feeling like I could really use a nap.
It’s been this way most of my life, though, so what’re’ya’gonna’do? If it wasn’t my shoulder it’d be my neck, my hands, my forearms, my hip, my lower back, my left knee. I’ve suffered chronic pain since I was a kid falling out of the top bunk. You learn to live with it.
Some mornings, though, when the sleep wasn’t as restful as it needed to be, I have a hard time staying focused. This is usually when the anxiety flares up. I feel tired, but I also feel dread—usually about the one thing that I love doing the most, which is writing. There are mornings when the writing gets difficult, and doesn’t feel like the joy I usually experience, because my body and mind aren’t rested or in the right place. And, I guess this may be irony, that makes me feel even more anxious and worried, which makes me feel more tired and restless. And all of that makes me feel guilty.
Guilty, because I have one of the more blessed lives I know about. I get to do the thing I love for a living, every single day. I get to be exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up. And for dumb reasons, stupid pain reasons, I’m not doing it, and even dread doing it.
Mornings such as these.
There’s something else that happens when I feel this. I don’t just dread doing the work, and dread not doing the work, I also dread any task that’s on my plate. Any task. Even something as simple as getting the mail, responding to a text message, reading something that was set aside for me to read. All of it feels too heavy, like it’s going to crush me before sweeping me away.
Today, when Mini nudged me to let me know it was time for her to go outside, time for her to do her business, I managed to swing my feet out of the bed and stand unsteadily for a moment. I felt the ache and pain in my shoulder, rolled my head on my neck to a chorus of pops, and swayed a little as I pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, slipped my feet into my flip-flops, and led a tiny dog to the door.
Outside, I dropped into one of the rocking chairs on our back patio like I’d just gotten here after a day’s hike through the Appalachian trail. The weariness had me. The lack of restful sleep was weighing on me.
I checked my phone while Mini sniffed out the perfect spot to pee. There was a notification from the Day One app—15 entries on this date. Something I usually love about that app, the reminder of what my life looked like in slices of this day, over the years. In that moment, it just felt like one more thing, a little more weight and burden.
Day One is a journaling app that I’ve used since around 2013. I keep a variety of journals in it, so there are days when I may have multiple entries. In fact, these very posts are written in Day One—I like that I can look back and see what I wrote about on this date, where my head was at. I like seeing what’s different, but it’s more intriguing when I notice what’s stayed the same. So I do like to peruse the entries.
Today, one of those entries was a letter.
“Dear Kevin 2024,” it started.
On this day, one year ago, I wrote a letter to myself, but I wrote it as Me 2030. Six years in the future.
In that letter, I thanked my past self for all the hard work. For never giving up. For working through the anxiety and worry, the exhaustion, the setbacks, so that the Me of 2030 could enjoy the fruits of all that labor. I described a pretty good scene, actually. The future is going to be sweet.
Reading that, I was inspired. Which, I’ll say, was kind of the point. But it prompted me to open up a new entry, and to write a new letter.
So I wrote to Kevin 2024 again.
Essentially, I wrote that I wasn’t yet the Kevin who was looking back on all the things that Kevin 2024 had accomplished over the next six years. But I was looking back a year out. And... well... I was still grateful. Or maybe it’s that I was already grateful.
I thanked Kevin 2024, for sticking things out over a hard year, for doing the hard work. I offered some comfort:
“Right now you’re feeling anxious and afraid. Right now there are things happening that worry you. Some of that worked out all by itself. Some you had to struggle through. Some of it is still a struggle. But you, at least, are far better.”
I wrote to update him on all the good stuff that’s happened. All the things he got through. All the moments where he faced pain and weariness and dread, and somehow did the right thing anyway.
I signed it, “Bless you, Kevin 2025.”
A funny thing happened after that...
Once I was done with that letter, I didn’t feel any less tired. I still felt the pinch of anxiety. I still felt burdened.
But I also felt hope.
I felt, suddenly, that I had someone on my side. Because I do. I have me. I have me on my side, from every era and every moment of my life, until the end of it all.
I have others, too. Friends. Family. Readers. My community. There are more people on my team than I sometimes realize.
It’s good, I think, to remind ourselves of that. But maybe it’s easier if we try to remind the person we were, rather than trying to convince who we are.
I could never pep-talk myself this good, right here and now.
But I can definitely look back and tell Kevin 2024 that things turned out better than he feared.
A NOTE AT THE END
This letter thing isn’t new for me. In various journals, both digital and handwritten, I’ve taken a crack at this idea often, over the years. Some of the letters I find are cringy as hell. Pep talks that sound flat and hollow and empty. Faux future selves who put on an Instagram filter to make life look amazing. Re-reading that stuff, it never feels true.
This letter was the first I’ve re-read and thought, “That sounds sincere.”
It’s probably because I didn’t spend a ton of time painting a picture of myself as having conquered life. I didn’t tout great wealth or prestige or esteem. I didn’t brag about mansions or living on the moon, or whatever thing I thought at the time would mean I’d “made it.” Instead, the bulk of the letter was simply gratitude.
This morning, the Readwise app reminded me of a passage I highlighted in The Science of Getting Rich, from Wallace Wattles:
“The grateful mind continually expects good things, and expectation becomes faith.
I think, perhaps, there is a key in that passage that unlocks what happened for me, as I read this letter. Because I was focused more on being grateful than on telling myself “everything’s going to turn out awesome,” I ignited within my present day self an expectation of good things. And that ignited faith.
Things are not entirely rosy, here in 2025. But neither are they so awful that I can’t face living. Things are certainly better on this day in 2025 than they were on this day in 2024. And that gives me hope that there will be even more things to be grateful for in the years to come.
So I wrote a new letter to myself to not only tell Kevin 2024 that things would be better, but to thank him for being the reason it all got better. Because the effort to change, improve, evolve, grow—that has to start somewhere. The only place it can start is here. Now.
It’s good to hear that the effort is worth it. It’s good to feel the gratitude of who you will be, in the midst of being who you are.
Next year I’m going to write another letter on this day. And I think—I believe—it’s going to be the same, in some small ways. Different in others, but the same in the way that counts.
Gratitude, turned to expectation, turned to faith.
That’s a letter worth reading.
Enjoyed this post. A few days ago I found a note I’d made years ago, encouraging me to “be your own best friend.” Seems like solid advice, right?
We must be kindred souls. I, too, get to do what I love for a living and I also must too often fight to function. RediCalm is an amazing help when a) I remember to buy it and b) I remember to take it. No, I don't get a kickback from whatever the company is. But your article did remind me I have to place a new order, so thanks for the mental nudge!