Letter from the Past: Dear 2026 Chris, Do Not Make Me a Liar.

Dear 2026 Chris,

I am writing to you from the dangerous side of hope.

I still believe in the whole thing.

That is what you need to remember about me.

I know I look tired. I know I am carrying a lot. I know I have already lived through enough loss to be suspicious of any sentence that begins with “someday.” I know I have quit before. I know I have deleted work. I know I have mistaken pain for proof and fear for wisdom.

But right now, in 2021, I still believe.

I believe the MFA means something.

Not because a degree saves anyone. Not because a piece of paper opens the gates and allows a person to walk cleanly into the life they wanted. I am not that naive, though I am maybe still naive adjacent.

I believe it means something because I came back.

That is the part I need you to honor.

I came back to writing after trying to leave it. I came back after telling myself I was done, after trying to become practical, after trying to become a serious person with serious aims and no embarrassing need to make things. I came back because life without the work felt like poison.

So if you are reading this five years from now, do not tell me you merely maintained.

Do not tell me you kept the dream warm in a drawer.

Do not tell me you became very good at explaining why now was not the time.

I need more from you than survival.

I need motion.

When I wrote out those goals, I was not trying to decorate a document. I was trying to give us a map.

Create and grow as a writer/director of narrative content.

Self-sustain a creative-centric lifestyle.

Assist others in the development of their skills and careers as creatives.

Those were not three nice phrases.

They were coordinates.

So let me ask you plainly:

Are you closer?

Not in your head.

In the world.

Can someone see the work?

Can someone read the scripts?

Can someone watch something you made?

Can someone understand who you are as an artist within thirty seconds of landing on your website?

Have you made it easier for the right people to help you?

Have you helped anyone else?

Have you protected your body, your marriage, your mind, your creative energy?

Have you built habits or merely admired them?

Have you entered the competitions you said you would enter?

Have you gone to the festivals not as a tourist, but as a person with a purpose?

Have you reached out to the people whose names you wrote down because part of you knew they mattered?

Have you made the short?

That last one feels important.

I know you love the page. I know writing is the place where you can control the weather. But you said you wanted to direct. You said you wanted to make films, not only write blueprints for imaginary ones.

So I need to know:

Did you pick up the camera again?

Did you stand in a room with actors and try to solve the human problem of making a scene live?

Did you make something small and imperfect and real?

Or are you still waiting for the correct amount of money, confidence, collaborators, gear, schedule, weather, location access, emotional stability, and divine permission?

I hope not.

Because we both know the cavalry is not coming.

And if you have spent five more years waiting for them, I am going to be very annoyed with you.

You do not need to be famous by now.

You do not need to be rich.

You do not need representation yet, though I hope you have at least made yourself visible enough that representation is no longer a fantasy category.

You do not need to have solved the whole career.

But you do need evidence.

Evidence that you are not just becoming better in private.

Evidence that the work is entering the world.

Evidence that the dream has legs.

A polished feature.

A produced short.

A real website.

A few brave submissions.

A few uncomfortable emails.

A handful of people who know what you are building because you told them clearly.

A community, even a small one.

A body that has not been completely sacrificed to the chair.

A budget that does not quietly sabotage the future.

A marriage that is not treated like background music while you chase the thing.

A life.

That is what I want from you.

Not martyrdom.

Not delusion.

Not a hustle-culture performance where every hour must be monetized and every relationship becomes an opportunity.

I want a creative-centric life that is actually livable.

Remember that part?

Self-sustain a creative-centric lifestyle.

That does not mean quitting a job recklessly and declaring yourself free while the bills burn down the house.

It means arranging the facts of your life so the work has oxygen.

The job should not eat the writer.

The debt should not own the future.

The apartment should not become a storage unit for avoidance.

The schedule should not be so full of vague intentions that no actual pages get written.

The website should not be a placeholder for the person you are afraid to claim you are.

And mentorship.

Please do not skip that part.

I know you may feel unqualified. I know you may think you need more success before you can help anyone else. But there is always someone a few steps behind who does not need your perfection. They need your honesty. They need your map of the potholes. They need someone to say, “Do not delete your work. Do not confuse the note with the wound. Do not wait to be chosen before you begin.”

You can be useful before you are decorated.

Maybe that is how you earn the decorations, if they come at all.

I also want you to remember why the work matters.

Not because Hollywood needs another script.

It does not.

Not because the world is starving for one more man to process his sadness through cinema.

Debatable.

The work matters because there are people like us who do not see their lives framed correctly very often.

People from small towns who are not punchlines.

People with grief who are still funny.

People with ambition who do not want to become machines.

People who left home and found out the leaving did not cure them.

People who stayed and were mistaken for people without dreams.

People who carry loss, debt, love, shame, anger, tenderness, and still have to go to work on Monday.

That is your territory.

Do not abandon it because someone else’s career looks cleaner.

Do not sand yourself down because you are afraid of being too much.

Do not lead with trauma, fine. But do not amputate the very thing that gives the work blood.

Be professional.

Be kind.

Be prepared.

But do not become beige.

I am trusting you with the next part.

That is what this whole document was, whether I knew it or not. A handoff. A younger version of us saying: I have named the life. Now go live in that direction.

So live in that direction.

Finish the scripts.

Make the short.

Send the emails.

Go to Austin.

Update the site.

Help another writer.

Run sometimes.

Eat like you are not trying to punish the body carrying all these dreams.

Love your wife well.

Keep the dog close.

Keep the room clean enough for the mind to move.

Keep the pages going.

And please, for both of us, do not make me a liar.

With hope and unreasonable expectations,

2021 Chris