I signed up for a month-long, email-based writing course from Cole Schafer of Sticky Notes, Honey Copy, and Chasing Hemingway fame.

He sends a lesson and prompt every day. I have 10 minutes to read and consider the prompt, 40 minutes to write, and 10 minutes to edit before posting publicly.

I’m posting here to not drown my Casey's Notes content. On to day 10...

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Today's writing prompt is to have a conversation with my younger self, using nothing but dialogue. This should be interesting.

"So, here we are. This is where we ended up. What do you think?"

"Well, nice house. Nice neighborhood. Nice work on the wife, too. And are those twins? Can't say I expected that. But only two kids?"

"Yeah, 'only' two. Just wait. You'll learn."

"So what do we do for a living? You don't look like a fighter pilot to me..."

"Thanks?"

"...so I assume something with golf? Maybe baseball. Or worst case, we're some kind of engineer, right?"

"Right now? We spend our days going to parks and playgrounds, and taking care of stuff at home. Know how you lay out your clothes at night in the order you'll put them on in the morning? Yeah, that's an indicator of how nuts you are as an adult. You're good with order. And wow does this house need order."

"So we're unemployed?"

"Kind of? We got a degree from Ohio State..."

"How was that?"

"Amazing. Best four years of your life. Get excited to drink a lot of cheap beer. Then we spent 14 years working in finance. We even lived in New York City for a while. Right now, you think things like money, status, and title are going to make you happy. You're going to learn they don't."

"Well that sucks."

"It does. But the journey is worth it. Right now we're trying to figure out what's next. We may find that we really did like the predictability of a desk job. Or we may find out that we're made for something else. That wife of ours you like so much? She's a badass and is carrying the financial burden in the house so you can figure things out. We're doing a lot of writing."

"Wait a minute. We lived in New York City, worked in finance, and had good jobs... and now we... write?"

"Yeah, you know how you won a few Power of the Pen contests and the DARE essay contest?"

"...y-yeah?"

"Turns out you actually like writing. It's a pain in the ass, but you really like wringing out those creative juices. You're going to have a blog and you'll see if the writing turns into anything."

"What the hell's a blog?"

"Your own website where you write stuff online."

"So anyone can read it?"

"Yep."

"Tell me people don't know it's us. We work really hard to cover up that we're a nerd."

"People know it's us. And you'll eventually get comfortable with your nerdiness. You won't believe this but nerds rule the world. You're going to wish Mom and Dad made us learn to write software or keep playing piano."

"Oh god. Alright, well, this has been fun. I have baseball practice in an hour so I'm going back to Goldeneye."

"You don't care and you're not going to listen anyway, but life will never be this easy. It's going to get so. much. better, but it will never be this easy. Enjoy it."

"Enjoy your... 'blog.' And tell our wife I said hi."