Why I Write Letters to Myself Every New Year's Eve

It started in 2019. I don't remember why.

I think I was at a party. Or coming back from one. Or skipping one. I sat down and wrote a letter to the version of me who'd read it in a year. Not goals. Not resolutions. Just... what I was feeling. What I was hoping. What I was scared of.

I've done it every year since. Six letters now. Each one a snapshot of a person I no longer fully am.

That's the thing about letters to yourself. They're time capsules, but not the nostalgic kind. They're the confrontational kind. They show you exactly who you were, with no room for revision. You can't rewrite the memory. It's there, in your handwriting, saying things you've since grown out of or into or sideways from.

The 2020 one is the one I come back to most. I was terrified and pretending not to be. I wrote something about putting myself in a place where magic can happen. I've read that line back every year since. And every year it hits different, because I'm different. The words haven't changed. I have.

Some years I read them and feel proud. I did the thing I said I'd do. I became the person I was hoping to become. Other years I read them and feel the gap. The distance between who I was planning to be and who I actually turned out to be.

Both are useful. The pride reminds me that I can trust myself. The gap reminds me that I'm not done.

I'll write one tonight. I always do. I don't know what it'll say yet. It never comes planned.

But I know 2027 Ishan will read it and feel something. That's enough reason to write it.

-I.R.