How was your Thanksgiving? 🦃🍁🥧

Dear Friend,

Hey! How’s it going? I hope you had a very safe, yet special, thanksgiving earlier this week. I spent Thanksgiving Day with my parents, and with a lot of Turkey leftovers Ian and I then spend much of yesterday making traditional sides for Thanksgiving part II!

So earlier in the month around my birthday, my high school friends and I opened up a time capsule we had sealed back in 2010. While I could remember some of the items I had put in — my original iPod touch, a meaningful book, and a copy of that day’s newspaper — I had completely forgotten we had also recorded a number of videos capturing the event, and that we had each written a letter for future, um… present us.

Upon watching the video and after reading the letter had me very sentimental, just to see where I was and the things I thought was important to me back then. It was also just a bit… foreign to see how genuinely excited I was about the future, while fully able to read behind that optimism to see the nervousness that is still so familiar today.

But there’s the thing: 2010 was a full year before working at IGN, a life-changing career where I ended up meeting some of the people I now call my dear friends. It was also half a decade before meeting Ian, who until then the thought of even having a boyfriend was something I always wanted but never truly believed could actually happen to me. As much as that 2010 version of Obama-era Winson had in optimism (something I can’t say I have much of nowadays), he also didn’t have a full decade of life-changing things, people, and experiences that shaped me to who I am today.

So, what I’m trying to say is that even though we’re living in what may seem like the darkest timeline right now, and that the smallest hope we’re holding on to today can look more like a delusion than a possibility, the time capsule was proof to me that things can indeed get better.

As tough as things are in 2020, what with the world literally torn between hurricanes and wildfires, authoritan ideologies and conspiracy theories, all topped with a global pandemic that is COVID-19, we also don’t know what the future can bring us.

Things can always get better or worse whether it’s politics, climate change, or family life, but It’s worth keeping an open mind (and outliving the chaos) to see how the next ten years unfold. Where were you ten years ago and what would you tell yourself in ten years? Feel free to reply to this email and let me know! I look forward to hearing what you’re up to.

Love wins

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