37 Life Lessons from My Future Self
If I could use a quantum device to message my childhood self these 37 life lessons from my 37 years of life, I would save my present self a lot of pain and struggle. Although, my future self would be unrecognizable and this blog may not exist in this form for you to read at present. May they bring you luck.
1. The society around you is the container everything else lives in.
Civil rights, privacy, healthcare, housing, food, education, wages, time off — these are not political abstractions. They are the water you swim in. They determine the quality of every relationship you can have, every goal you can reach, every amount of pressure you can withstand before you break. A sick society compounds everything. Fight for it like your life depends on it — because it does.
2. You only have the rights you can afford to defend.
The law exists. Your rights exist. Without money to enforce them, both are largely theoretical. Before you sign a lease, enter any relationship with legal dimension, or move out of your parents’ house — have a legal fund. Minimum $10,000. Not rent. Not a car. Legal emergencies only. The person on the other side of your dispute is counting on you not being able to afford to fight back. Don’t give them that. You’re freedom could depend on it.
3. Treat love like a drug that once you try you cannot put down.
The person you date even once — and especially who you marry — has the second highest impact on your health, your success, your growth, or your failure. Observe who they are when things are hard. Being alone is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. Being killed by the wrong partner is.
4. The normal amount of pain, discomfort, and strife is zero.
5. No one is who they appear to be.
No two people think alike, behave alike, or feel emotions the same way. There are neurotypes. Psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists, neurotypicals, autists, adhder’s, ocder’s and every other flavor of person who will look like someone you recognize and operate like someone you don’t. Stop projecting your internal world onto other people. Watch what they do. Believe it.
6. Say no to most things. Politely at first.
Even better if they press and you act rudely. Obligation and fear run a lot of automatic yes programs. The no you didn’t say is responsible for more damage than you’ve accounted for.
7. Not all actors are rational actors.
One single confusing or hurtful red flag is enough. You do not need a pattern. Irrational behavior does not announce itself before it escalates — it announces itself exactly once, quietly, and then it escalates. Act on the first flag. Dehumanization of any kind is a red flag.
8. Confusion is a signal.
Not a feeling to push through. Confusion is a signal of warfare and deception. Any meaningful confusion should trigger a change in access, lifestyle, or location depending on the source. Clarity is your baseline. Confusion is a warning.
9. Betrayal requires proximity.
They need opportunity, ability, and motive. You cannot always control motive or ability. You can control opportunity. Remove it. This is not paranoia. This is architecture.
10. Document everything.
Write a daily dossier at the end of every workday. Any strange event — photograph it, video it, back it up, post it somewhere it cannot be taken from you. Your memory will be called into question. The documentation is the one place where the true version exists. Keep it religiously.
11. Avoid debt like it’s a person who wants something from you.
Even a mortgage. The best way to double your income is to cut your expenses in half. Every debt is a leash. Know who’s holding it.
12. Own only a few very good things.
Not many things. Things cost more than their price tag — the energy to store them, clean them, move them, mourn them when they’re gone. Own less. Own better. I tried to cling to what was ultimately clutter.
13. Everything else is built on sleep, food, movement and stillness.
Sleep. Food. Movement — or stillness, if that’s what your body needs. Your health is not a lifestyle choice. It is the infrastructure every other thing on this list depends on. Schedule everything else second.
14. Tough times are a filter.
Most people will not stay. This is not a tragedy — it’s information. The ones who evaporate were never load-bearing to begin with.
15. Time is the only asset that cannot be replaced, even if you had time travel.
16. If they don’t like your cooking, your pets, or your natural smell — they don’t like you. People who don’t like you could harm you with sustained opportunity and access.
17. People do what benefits them.
Not what is right. Not what is good. Not what is moral. Watch what someone moves toward when no one is looking. Believe it.
18. Safety is the original creative resource.
A soft life requires quiet hard work (and a lot of luck) at first — a savings account, the knowledge you could go a few months or ideally years without working and still pay rent and eat. That security is worth more than clothes, jewelry, makeup, cars, electronics, or houses.
I am writing more freely than I ever have. The difference is not talent — the talent was always there. The difference is that I am in a safer country with more respect for human rights and a stable income. You cannot create from inside a cage, even a comfortable one. Safety first. The work follows.
19. Trust institutions the same way you trust people.
With time. With experience. With attention to what they actually do rather than what they say they are. A good institution leaves you with more than you came in with. A bad one extracts, gaslights, makes you smaller, and calls that protection. Are you growing or shrinking? Sabotage, when you know what to look for, is so painfully obvious.
20. You do not owe a system or person who dehumanizes you allegiance, obedience, or an explanation.
21. Vent to a journal. Not a person.
People have limits, agendas, and memories. A journal has none of those. Even therapists have their limits on rumination. Write it all down first. Every time.
22. Do not publish the first draft of your pain.
The raw version belongs in the journal. What goes public should be slept on, shaped, and stripped of anything that hands ammunition to people who want to use it against you. Raw content feels like honesty. More often it is an open wound published before it has any scar tissue. The scar tissue is what makes it literature instead of liability. I did not follow that one at my own detriment.
23. There is no insurance for enduring sexual assault, forced-birth, or life-altering trauma. There is insurance for if pedophiles get sued.
Take that into account in all of your interactions. The architecture of protection in this society tells you exactly who it was built for. Plan accordingly.
24. Do not put a relationship on social media. Not once. Not ever.
Not dating. Not engaged. Not married unless it serves a specific legal or corporate purpose. A relationship published is a relationship performed. When it ends, that public record becomes a resource for everyone who ever wished you harm. You handed it to them yourself, one post at a time, while you were happy. Keep your love private.
25. Have a house before you marry. Have them have a house too. Keep them separate. Buy a third house for your new life and the baby. That means millennials are screwed because we have to buy houses which is why the birth rate is so low.
But the peace is worth it. Your house. Their house. Then if you choose to build a life together — a third house for that life. Two people who each have their own foundation do not need each other for survival — which means everything they choose to give is chosen freely. If it ends, you each leave with what you came with. Nobody is stranded. Nobody is staying in something broken because they have nowhere to go. If you divorce, you are both still stable and can honor a third space for the child.
For children: every child should have a supporting rental property in their name from as early as possible. Not a savings account earning nothing. A property that generates income while they grow.
Choose someone who shares your culture and your ideals. Shared culture means shared assumptions about how a home runs, how conflict gets handled, how children are raised. Those assumptions are invisible until they collide — and by the time they collide you are already in it. Find someone who already speaks your language(s), literally. The translation work is exhausting and never fully resolves.
26. A regulated nervous system in a quiet job is worth more than burnout in an impressive one.
The polished title, the salary, the LinkedIn profile — none of it shows up in your sleep. Burnout is not a badge. It is an injury. The goal is not an impressive life. The goal is a livable one.
27. Self-host everything.
Do not build your creative life on rented land. The moment you depend on a platform for reach or income you have handed them editorial control over your voice. Certain identities, certain politics, certain truths are not compatible with advertiser safety guidelines. Own your domain. Own your archive. Own your words.
28. Your trauma history belongs to your therapist. No one else.
Trauma disclosure feels like intimacy. It is not — it can be inventory if it isn’t properly integrated. Your therapist is bound by confidentiality and has no stake in your personal life. Tell them everything. Lie to everyone else. You grew up on a rainbow farm with unicorns.
29. Choosing a man is like choosing a grape from a bowl where one in four will assault you and one in five will kill you.
You can say it’s not all grapes. You are correct. But you cannot identify the poisoned ones by looking at them. They are in the same bowl. They look the same from the outside. Eating even one of the wrong ones risks permanent bodily injury. You are allowed to take those numbers seriously. You are allowed to be selective to the point that people call you difficult. Difficult is alive. Do it silently. The only way to stop this is for the good grapes to kick the bad grapes out of the bowl.
30. Luxury is the norm. Not scarcity.
You were not born to scrape. Abundance is the natural state of a person whose needs are met and whose time is their own. Scarcity is manufactured — by debt, by bad relationships, by systems designed to keep you dependent. Expect good food, good rest, good company, good work as a baseline. Not as a reward. As a norm.
31. Surplus is the natural state. Extraction without regeneration is the interruption.
Any eco-system left alone long enough produces abundance. Scarcity is what happens when something extracts without returning. Ask of every system you participate in: is this regenerative or extractive? The ones manufacturing scarcity have a reason to keep you believing it’s natural. It isn’t.
32. No one has the right to study you, or to test you.
Not clinically. Not socially. Not as a curiosity or a case study. The moment you feel like someone is watching you more than they are seeing you — cataloguing your reactions, testing your limits, treating your pain as information — that is a boundary violation. Being studied without consent is dehumanization. You are not a research project. You don’t have to jump through circus hoops.
33. The tallest flower gets cut first. Silence is better than showing off.
Visibility is not always safety. Not every audience deserves your full height. Not every environment is safe enough for your real range. Show your work to people who have earned it. Be quiet everywhere else.
34. Privacy is protection where exploitation is normal. Privacy requires anonymity and a good baseline understanding of digital and physical security.
35. Not all change is good.
We have no idea what emerging technologies are doing to human evolution, to attention, to the nervous system, to the development of children’s brains. We are running the experiment in real time with no control group and calling it innovation. You are allowed to opt out. You are allowed to wait and see what it does to the people who adopted early before you decide whether you want it in your life.
36. Evil is real.
Not as a metaphor. Not as a trauma response that excuses the individual. Evil operates in real people and it can encompass entire institutions, and nations. The refusal to name it is its greatest advantage. Some people know exactly what they are doing. Some systems are designed explicitly to cause harm and are functioning as intended. Name it plainly. Do not let anyone talk you out of what you witnessed with your own eyes.
37. If it feels wrong, it is wrong.
Your nervous system knows before your mind does. We are trained to think our way through feelings, to call the warning signal butterflies and walk toward the thing making us afraid. Butterflies and dread live in the same part of the body. Learn the difference. The thinking mind can be deceived. The body is harder to fool. If it feels wrong — the room, the person, the offer, the relationship, the institution — it is wrong. Even guilt is a signal, you went against a moral code. You do not need evidence. You do not need to explain it to anyone. Trust it.
Ashley Fay is a Senior Technical Writer and multidisciplinary writer based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
ASH & INK 
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