Letter to My Teenage Self

Well, congrats on graduating high school! You have officially completed the bare minimum so give yourself a pat on the back. I know things seem very uncertain as you enter this summer going into your first year in college, but it will be a good summer though. You’ll get into a lot of things and trouble of course.

2017 will start off very bad (just thought I would tell you this now). You’ll find yourself alone and end up doing a lot of stupid shit as a way to cope with the emotions you have inside. Your best friend will move to a different state, but it's only 6 hours away so it’s not a big deal. It will really suck because you’ll end up finding yourself working a lot since you have a lot of free time you haven’t figured out what to do with yet. I’ll tell you this now that it was for the best. You became very reserved and took in a lot of time to heal from the things that hurt you in the last 7 months. You are still lonely, but your mindset is becoming structured to a point where you refuse to back down at any adversity. You just don’t know it yet.

You’ll find that meeting people in school is pretty hard considering you are a commuter and aren’t involved in Greek life. So, you’ll want to join some clubs. Solved. Little by little you begin stepping out of your comfort zone and feel more comfortable being yourself in places. You feel as if you are very lonely all the time, but you haven’t really thought of the people that have been by your side practically every step of the way. You’ll figure it out as time goes.

2018 will be one of the craziest years in your life man. Deadass. This is the year will you discover a trait inside that you didn’t really know you possessed. It all starts with people flaking on you. It’ll piss you off for sure, but later on, you’ll learn to see it as a blessing. You’ll have a homie hit you up so that you guys can go on a European backpacking trip. You’ll plan it for three months. And get this, they will actually bail on you a few days before the trip is supposed to start. So, you will find yourself at a crossroads where you don’t know whether to go by yourself or stay. You will think to yourself how depending on someone else just isn’t the move. Like why you should miss out on the fun at the expense of someone else’s integrity. You’ll get on a flight to Amsterdam and start your multi-week backpacking trip, COMO SI NADA COMPA.

The trip to Europe is its own story, but we will just leave it at this: You did yo thang cuh. Had it not been for that trip you wouldn’t have started your first business. You’ll be thinking about how to come up with 3 Grand in 3 months while still going to school full time. So, you’ll grab that shitty old trailer in the back yard and mount it on your truck and start getting clients. That will come to be one of your proudest moments in life on how you just make shit happen. You realize that you are always in control and no matter what you always find a way.

As you enter 2019 you begin building a great relationship with a dude in your IS class. Similar backgrounds, opposite personalities, but similar mentalities. You’ll find that surrounding yourself among ambitious people is what keeps you motivated. Seeing them achieve things encourages you to keep working and achieve things for yourself. But in the end, you’ll always want the best for the homies. You two will do great things together in school and keep pushing each other on to this day.

You’ll keep pushing on with your landscaping business and are the most motivated you have ever been. Like seriously you are sharp af. At this point, you’ll have one more year in school and that’s keeping you from dropping out at this point. You’re at a point where you can say fuck it and just focus on your business or just take a step back from the business and finish the degree and see what else you can get out of it. You want to scale the business up, but you really see yourself in the tech world. You just are letting the aura of being a 21-year-old with money blind you from the main goal. Money comes and money goes, and you’ll find that you make a lot of it, but it’ll become less of a priority and more of a consequence from doing what you love. So, ease up a little.

After your sister and brother in law keep pestering, you’ll take their advice and look for an internship. Somehow, you’ll land an interview with a huge tech company in Midtown. Go-time. 2 weeks later you’ll get the job. Later on, you’ll be hired full time after college. Erick, man, this is all because of how hard you bust your ass and refuse to let things from discouraging you. When things don’t pan out, you’ll keep working. When they do pan out, you’ll keep improving. No matter what you need to keep pushing to be the best version of yourself.

2020 will be by far a balanced year. Dawg, there’s a mf virus out here. It sucks but you’ll cope with it. But a huge highlight of your year is meeting someone and getting closer to them. Pinche romantico. But this someone really will push the best out of you even when they are not trying. It is just the idea of them that makes you want to be a better man and that alone will go a long way in how you navigate through life going forward. At this point in time, the vision has never been clearer, and you know what you want out of life, and this person is most definitely in your plans. But you will need to take things day by day and you’ll find that things are better when you live in the present.

It brings us to where we are now. One week from graduating from college. Things feel surreal but you aren’t worried so much about what’s to come. You have a job locked in and you just need to get past the next few days. You are one week away from no more school. You got it though man. You always have.

-Erick