Five Things I would Tell My Teenaged Self
17-year-old Lina with her hot boyfriend who would later be her hot husband
I’ve always seen blogs like this, where the much wiser thirty-something talks to her younger self, and I’ve always wondered what I’d say to my younger self. But up until now I haven’t had much to say to her. Not only would teenaged Lina not listen to a word I’d tell her, she’d probably be super angsty and annoyed that I wasn’t some super famous celebrity or something. On top of that, I always assumed the whole idea of this type of blog article was to improve my own adulthood somehow. Sure, I could tell her to go for illustration instead of music, but what would that mean for me today? Would I be somewhere different? Living somewhere different? Would I no longer be married with an awesome daughter?
But as I’ve gotten to think about it more and more, I realize that my version of this blog article would be to make my teenage-hood better. I had a turbulent time in middle and high school, and I never really “fit” anywhere. But if only I’d known how things would improve, and why I was so wayward in the first place, well then maybe I would have a whole lot more fun. So I decided to write five things I would tell teenaged Lina to improve her own life as an angsty, angry misfit with big dreams.
Big dreams are great, but achievable goals are better.
When I was a teenager, I wanted to do so many different things. I wanted to be an astronomer, then a musician, then an author, then a movie score composer. I had big dreams, but no big plans on how to achieve them. Looking back now I wonder if, at the age of eighteen, I even had the capacity to pursue any of these dreams. It seemed like everyone else knew what they wanted to do and were on their way to college. Me? I was still trying everything out, still playing with new hobbies and new ideas. So today I would tell teenaged Lina to keep having those big dreams, but in the meantime, to also find some achievable goals, like creating a bucket list for summer vacation, or the simple act of making it to marching band practice on time.
2. Chill. Your favorite tools haven’t even been invented yet.
Along with writing moody poetry and marching in band, I liked to fill sketchbooks with elves and made-up creatures. But I would get so frustrated because my tools were shabby and YouTube was still in its infancy so it was still just Numa Numa and music videos. To learn how to draw we had to use good old-fashioned books, which didn’t, and still don’t do it for me. This lack of today’s abundance of online courses and tutorials is probably why I went so long without knowing the right career move. Today I would tell teenaged Lina to just focus on experimenting. I would tell her to use whatever was left from her check after paying her car payment to buy art supplies (and yes, she would have to drive 30 minutes to the nearest Art store because Amazon didn’t exist yet). Try watercolors and inks. Try something new each month. Enjoy the process of experimentation. Because, Lina, not only will you someday be able to learn how to draw and paint and play on sites like Skillshare, your favorite tools won’t even be invented until several years after you graduate high school, and it will be well over a decade before you even know there is such a thing as an Apple pencil, or Procreate for that matter.
3. Buy a camera.
One thing that was becoming more mainstream at this point was the digital camera. I bought my first one at nineteen and learned just how much I love the medium. If I’d bought a camera sooner who knows the things I might have shot with all that moody hormonal angst to fuel my passion. However, I think I’d tell teenaged Lina to nab a film camera. At the time, you could still get film developed at any grocery store and it didn’t cost a fortune. Not only that, but film would give Lina something to hold in her hands after all that hard work, as opposed to the digital image she’d have to use her boyfriend’s computer to see.
4. Keep hiking, but bring a sketchbook.
When I was fifteen I lived on my grandparent’s farm. We had one-hundred and eighty awesome acres of fields and forests and creeks for me to explore. I was always out hiking, searching for arrowheads and attempting to locate the area my grandparents said was a Civil War battleground. Usually it was just me and one of those bulky portable CD players with the score from Fellowship of the Ring playing on repeat. But today I would tell Lina to also bring a sketchbook, to learn that she didn’t have to only draw faces, that she could also draw leaves and trees and the scenes that always inspired her to write by candlelight later. Maybe drawing nature scenes would boost that confidence she really needed in art to pursue it further.
5. The internet is small now, but it will be huge for your career.
As I’ve said, the internet wasn’t much when I was a teenager. We still had the weird dial-up sounds and couldn’t be on the phone at the same time. Smart phones were only in sci-fi movies (though we were lucky if we had a Nokia “brick”) and the only thing we really used the internet for was research for school papers, printing out directions to St. Louis, or chatting on Messenger. Facebook was still just for college kids, and nobody had heard of Myspace yet. It was a time that I talked on the phone a lot, sure, but still felt super disconnected from the world.
Today we have tons and TONS of social media sites, from Twitter to Facebook to INSTAGRAM to TikTok and Snapchat. Blogging became super easy in my early 20s, and now there are even sites like Squarespace that allow you to make your own website (like this one) with just a few clicks and zero knowledge of coding.
And online schooling? That was barely a thing when I was a teenager. If it was a thing at all. Today, my husband is just about to finish his degree from Arizona State University and we live in Missouri! If I’d told teenaged Chris that this would be his future, he’d probably ask if we also had flying cars.
So I would tell teenaged Lina that, although she is weird and doesn’t quite fit in, her people are out there, and she will find them someday. And when she does, she’ll not only be able to talk to them on sites like Twitter, but will also be able to create chats on Discord and watch her artist friends paint live on YouTube. LIVE. Teenaged Lina would think I was living in space! Because of these connections, the internet will make things like being an illustrator or writer or anything so much more accessible. Lots of people still scoff at the idea of the internet and how everyone is looking at their phones, but just think about the super weird misfits like me who have so many more friends now because of these awesome new tools. Maybe chatting with their friends on the other side of the world is the only way they can get through their day.
The Millennial Dilemma.
If there’s anything writing this blog has taught me it’s to have compassion for my teenaged self. I was so wayward and felt like I didn’t belong, and for a long time I was angry with her for not sucking it up and figuring it out. But I realize, now, just how powerless I must have felt. For instance, at sixteen I started dating my boyfriend who is now my husband. At eighteen, when everyone was going off to college in other states, I stayed behind. I didn’t want to have to move away from my long-term relationship to go to school, so I took what I could by going to community college in the area, and there really weren’t many degrees at these colleges that piqued my interest. Which means I’ve got a degree I don’t even use. And yet, recently, I have toyed with the idea of returning to school in Georgia for illustration, without even moving from my desk chair.
Teenaged Lina also struggled with not knowing she had OS ADHD, food allergies, and a whole mess of other things that might have been mussing up her focus at the time. But advances in both the internet and the mental health field only recently gave me the tools to find the help I needed so that I could get diagnosed and treated.
This is only one of the “Millennial Dilemmas” we’ve faced, this weird childhood without technology and then an adulthood with an abundance of it. A lot of us as teens were overworked, mentally ill, and dealing with things we wouldn’t understand for another decade. And then there are those of us who were totally unaware of what we wanted to be when we grew up because our dream jobs didn’t even exist yet.
However, perhaps its this weird half and half life we’ve faced that has given us the compassion we need to change the world. I see so many people online standing up for their rights, for others’ rights, lifting up the LGBTQ community and starting movements like BLM, allowing themselves to be totally weird and bravely outspoken. And maybe it’s always been like this, but we weren’t able to see it until we all had cameras in our pockets. All I know is we Millennials have seen what the world is like on both sides of the coin, and for me, this side of the coin is a lot funner. I’d much rather have access to all the possibilities than view the world from a bubble on a dead end street.
So what would my final words to teenaged Lina be? And to all teenagers like her in today’s tech-abundance world? Relax. You don’t need to know what you want right out of high school. I’m sure some Zoomers won’t be attending college until they’re thirty, when the world finally opens a virtual-reality tech school accessed from the inside of a video game. We’re raised thinking of life as a career search, but in reality, life is so so so much more. So stop stressing. Start setting goals realistic to teenage-hood. And don’t be afraid to try something new, or take a night off from the grind, or spend a day doing absolutely nothing.
Also, it’s totally okay to be weird. Then again, I’ve always known that.
