Dear Younger Alice,
It’s not often you get a chance to write to your younger self, and there is probably a great deal I could tell you about (such as the delights of having a mortgage), but I won’t bore you with all that now. Instead, I will settle with telling you not to worry, pause, and enjoy being young, because quite simply you don’t do enough of that and you may regret it a little.
I know that when you were 10 years old, you wanted to be a Doctor on Tuesdays, a Ballerina on Wednesdays and the Prime Minister on Thursdays. Well, I can tell you that thankfully none of that happened. Instead, you became a lawyer, which is something I know you never considered being whilst growing up (one of the few professions that you didn’t!), you have a fantastic partner (whom you are getting married to soon) and you have a brilliant support network of family and close friends.
“My advice? Continue to be ambitious, but know the importance of having a life outside of school, work and study because there is a small window to enjoy being young and you need to live and breathe it. “
If you want something enough, I assure you it will happen as long as you are prepared to work for it. And if you don’t know what you want to do, or what you want to be from one day to the next (which I know you suffered from), that’s also COMPLETELY fine. Surround yourself with people who care for you and will support you as I do now because they will get you to your goals and through hurdles along the way.
Love from future Alice x
P.S. You will be obsessed with cats when you are older and you will inevitably be judged by ‘dog people’. Don’t let it get to you because quite frankly, cats are better.