10 things to tell myself 10 years ago

I stumbled across this idea in a forum at 20 something bloggers and I thought it was one of the neatest ideas in the history of ideas.

It's 2010 and ten years ago it was the magical year 2000. I was 15 and in my second month of 10th grade. That was an incredibly eventful year for me and I would have loved some advice from a future self. Well here it is, 10 years too late :)

Dear young Spammy,

1) This year you start working buddy. Grit your teeth cause the first few months are the hardest, by next summer you'll have gotten all your friends hired and be running the line with Jay like nobody's business. Don't let Steve push you around, he's not as nice a guy as he seems and as soon as you talk about even little successes in your life he will get bitterly jealous of you.

2) Save your cash you dumbass. Yes the PS2 gets you a lot of great rpgs and the cd and dvd collection get very awesome for a high school student, but eventually you buy your music on itunes, you don't really watch the movies anyway, and you sell half your crappy PS2 games. Stick to a few solid rpgs, borrow Peter and Drew's cds and just burn them onto your computer and just rent movies for the weekend cause that's pretty much what you're going to do anyways. You need that money for stuff later on.

3) Stop buying food at the mall for lunch and at work for dinner. Your ass will get jiggly. I know how delicious the A&W grandpa burger with cheese is, or how epic a pizza you can make at work. Seriously, it'll do you a world of good for your self esteem if you save your money and not get all chunky.

4) Work out! Or at least do something more active than playing your brand new PS2 in the basement all the time. Start throwing around the football with the guys again, actually take up cross country like you always said you would, suck it up and learn Karate (you're going to regret that later this year anyways) DO SOMETHING!

5) Don't be lazy with school! Soon you're going to love your basement and working 5 days a week and trying to get out of the house more than doing schoolwork. Last year you got 80s and even a 90. This year you're going to be lucky and to hit 70 twice. Enjoy your rpgs and work and friends, but if you make school count you won't have to realize how much potential you actually have until years later in night school. You're a bright kid, you just need to put in the work.

6) Don't hang out with Ord and Tim and Slingsby outside of school. You get into a helluva lot of shit dealing with those guys. Eventually you drop them like the deadbeats they turn into anyways. You can't help them. Trust me on this. Spend more time with Drew. Hang out more with the people you grew up with. You can actually trust them. Some of them.

7) Pay more attention to your brothers. You're kind of an asshole to them sometimes.

8) Drinking is okay and so is a bit of experimenting, but stop devoting your time into scoring booze and weed. The actual drinking and drugs don't hurt you nearly as much as the what happens in your attempts on getting your hands on that shit.

9) Stand up for yourself. You let a lot of people push you around for no reason. You think it has to do with understanding and preserving friendships, but in reality you become a doormat and a mascot and a sidekick. You will actually feel a lot better about yourself. Let people know you're serious.

10) Stop doing nothing about your crushes. Talk to girls! They ain't as intimidating as you think. Some are even more scared of you then you are of them. You're mature for your age (not as mature as you will be in a few months but at that point girls aren't a priority) you have a job and you are (could be) an excellent student. You talk to the girls you grew up with all the time. You watched tons of boy/girl drama go down and you have a much better idea of what to do/not to do then you think. A little confidence, even fake confidence, will impress yourself and your friends more than anything else you could do this year.

"How quickly I forget...
That this is meaningless
How quickly I forget...
That this is meaningless
What have I learned from yesterday?
What have I learned from yesterday?"

That's me. Still trying to do my best.