When I was in high school, my friends and I discovered a website called Futureme.org where you can send yourself an e-mail to any future date you’d like. For years, we sent ourselves e-mails with silly details like how cool it was to have an Ipod or how excited we were to get our driving licenses. Years later, we’d get a blast from the past and laugh about the hilarious predictions we wrote about the future. It felt like we were time traveling.

Now flash-forward to 2014 before I took off on an incredible backpacking trip to New Zealand and I was figuring out how to journal it. I was never great at keeping up with my diaries as a kid, so I wanted to avoid ending up with another half-filled notebook taking up space in my room.

So as I weighed out my options, I remembered how much I loved writing those e-mails and figured it’d be fun to e-mail a journal entry each day to exactly one year after. This way, I wouldn’t have to carry a notebook around and I could bring the trip back alive in the future wherever I was.

When the e-mails began to arrive, the experience was just as magical as it had been in high school. While living life back in college I relived hikes, the excitement of befriending backpackers from all over and traveling on my own for the first time. I was brought back to a far away land.

Eventually, I wasn’t only writing about epic, exciting moments but also ordinary, every-day experiences like this one e-mail I sent from a gas station while I drove to college by myself and enjoyed the “beautifyl” view:

I even attached a very mediocre photo ( Great job PastMe!)

I was in a pretty bad mood the day I got that and when I looked at that short, poorly written e-mail about nice weather, I suddenly felt that rush of joy I got from enjoying something so small.

Soon enough, I started to write about emotional times. The biggest one so far was the one I sent the day my parents told me they were splitting up. Just like I had done in many other e-mails, I wrote down how I felt and that I was sure that by the time I read those words, it would all turn out okay.

Writing e-mails to the future became journaling with a purpose. I wasn’t just venting or recounting what happened on a certain day. I didn’t write about my parents’ divorce so I can relive the shock and sadness, I told myself specific things I wanted to hear in the future in a way that could positively impact it.

Sometimes, I read exactly what I need to hear, like “I hope you’re getting enough sleep right now.” Other times I disagree with my past self and realize I see things differently. For example, I can’t believe how many times in college I wrote things like “I hope I have a boyfriend now!” or “I hoped I finally lost weight.” (What weight?!)

However, what I love about writing to my future self is that in the end, no matter the intention was when I wrote it, it always has some kind of positive influence on me. It teaches me how much I’ve changed and grown, how things are never as bad as I think they are at the time, and how time traveling is sort-of possible :)