About a week ago in one of my classes, we completed a time-capsule interview project. Each student interviewed another and was interviewed about their journey to and at Northwestern. This included everything from getting that acceptance letter to move-in day to impressions of academic/social life, and even what we want our freshman selves to say to our senior selves before we repeat the interview in four years.
The project instantly made me think back to high school when our freshmen selves wrote letters in health class that would be hand delivered on graduation day – except mine got lost. I brought this up to a couple of friends who also lamented about not getting their letters. It’s possible that whatever memories and souvenirs that were enclosed are lost forever.
Of course, that led me to wonder: how can I record my memories, preserve them, forget about them, and one day get a pleasant surprise letter? Enter: futureme.org.
FutureMe is a website where you can write yourself a letter of any length, enter your email, and select the amount of time you want to get it back in, which could be a day or ten years. It’s almost too easy. The site boasts the accomplishment of delivering over ten million letters since their inception in 2002. The site has also been featured in popular press like The Today Show, NPR, The Los Angeles Times, and CNN. Needless to say, it’s been pretty successful.
Want to write but got writer’s block? Besides getting some inspo from any of the public letters featured on the site, many of their testimonials share ideas of what you could write about and why you should write. Some of these include:
- Setting long-term goals and reminders
- Letting out emotions / free therapy
- Recording happy memories
- Asking yourself questions
- Manifesting for the future
- Tracking your personal growth
- Sending some love and positive vibes to your future self
Whether you journal daily or it’s something you’ve never considered trying, practice self-love by sending yourself a letter through the site. It can be a couple sentences or a complete emotional dump – up to you. With this fool-proof site, you will never lose your time-capsule letters again… unless you forget to check your email.