By: Stephen Clare

Dear past me,

I’ve got beef with you.

Firstly, you definitely didn’t need to do those extra shots last weekend. You’d had enough. I’ll probably have to chat with future us about this as well. Seriously, when have we ever said “man, I’m sure glad Bryce convinced me to choke down a few more gulps of tequila!”?

Secondly, you really screwed me over by not getting that essay done on Sunday. Come on man. That’s just selfish. Seriously, you had a good 12 hours there to crank through, but instead you just watched 14 episodes of Homeland. You don’t even like that show. I know because I don’t like it either.

Speaking of Sunday: I don’t know why you trusted the 49ers. I guess it’s another week of ramen for future us. Poor guy.

Past me, sometimes I just don’t understand you. What made you stay up so late last night? Why did you feel a desperate need to buy a $25 rubber horse head mask? And why on earth would you think she’s awestruck by your wildly gyrating hips? (Hint: she’s just trying to catch the attention of her friend dancing behind you. Stop with the bedroom eyes, they’ll get you nowhere).

You gotta remember that your actions affect other people. Your friends, your family, and, most importantly, me. Present me. I’m number one, bro, and those weird Facebook messages you sent on Saturday night definitely aren’t helping out with the ladies. I don’t care how funny you think they are: an obsession with cat videos doesn’t exactly scream “boyfriend material.” Oh, and while we’re on the subject, none of those pickup lines you Googled are going to work. Just stop.

We can do better, my friend. Trust me. But I can’t keep cleaning up your mess; seriously, we have to work together.

So how about this: let’s cooperate. I need you to pick up a bit of the slack here. You go finish up that essay (trust me, you’ll thank yourself later), and while you’re in an academic mood why don’t you crank out that lab report, Linear Algebra assignment, chemistry homework, philosophy reading, and a good few hours of studying for next week’s test. Then, when now rolls around we’ll have been good and productive and we can start catching up on Parks and Rec episodes. Rock on. Isn’t it nice to have all that out of the way?

I’m not interested in any more excuses, past me. It’s time to clean up your act. You can’t keep dumping your problems on present me, because they’re building up to the point that I can’t dump them on future me. And that’s not cool, because present me would really like to just chill and play Xbox all night.

Cool. I’m really glad we had this little talk. I mean, what’s good for me is good for you, right? Sometimes I think you forget that. Like two weeks ago, when you—well, let’s not talk about that right now. Some things are better left in the past. Or so future me tells us.

I love you dearly,

Present Me