Dear Lana,

I’m scared for what the future holds. I’m scared at how quickly it is for happiness to evaporate. I’m scared how I haven’t found the invincible summer yet.

Uncertainty is what breeds life. Similar to using cheat codes in a video game, certainty breeds boredom, and boredom breeds death. But, on the other hand, if uncertainty breeds stress, and stress breeds death, then isn’t life just breeding death?

I’m joking, Lana. I’m just distracting myself because I don’t know what there is in the future. I’m not sure what gratitude means yet. Is wanting a better life a sign that I am not grateful? I wish you could just tell me the answer so I wouldn’t have to think about it so much. But alas, that’s not how questions work. Questions exist to be asked, not necessarily to be answered. The merit of a question can exist without the resolution to the question, and that is mostly where I go with my questions. Although, most of the time, I often think I justify things to myself so I don’t need to confront the reality of how stupid I’m being.

I remember distinctly what I was like last year during this time. It is weird, because I am still in the same bedroom as I was in last year. By this time, I had hoped that I would be in New York in my own apartment, but obviously not everything works out in the way you hope.

This time last year, it was right after my internship. I was scared shitless about recruiting, so I was frantically reading a finance textbook and practicing casing with my casing partners. This time last year, I was working so hard. I wonder if I would be able to work that hard again for the rest of my life. I am studying again now, for completely different things, yet I can’t really muster the same energy to study as I did last year. Was it the stress? Is it impossible to study without some form of stress? Does that mean I should induce some stress in my life to make my studying more effective?

Lana, I felt weirdly disconnected today. I took a walk after I finished work. It must have been a 20 minute walk, but I don’t remember much of it. When I returned home, I understood that I had just gone on a 20 minute walk, but there’s nothing I really have to show for that. If I don’t remember the walk, did it really happen at all? I mean, sure, I took a walk. But if I don’t remember the walk, what external force validates the walk as happening at all?

I remember things. As a human with a brain, I remember. But what about the universe at large? Is there universal memory that keeps track of whether I went on a walk or not?

Poetically, there’s the water cycle. Technologically, there’s the cloud. Realistically, I’m not sure if I’m convinced at either. This has been a useless train of thought.