This letter has travelled 17 years into the past to find your hands. You are single, you live with your parents, you have just left college, and you are working for the family business. You’re not going to believe what I have to tell you.
In 17 years time you are married. You met a girl in Oxford one Sunday afternoon in 2000. Neither of you thought it would go anywhere at first, but you saw each other again, and again, and nature took it’s course. Pretty good going for somebody who never dreamed he would even meet anybody.
You will live near London. Months from now, your entire family will scatter across Englandyou will find your career a couple of miles from the girl you’re going to meet in Oxford.
You will work as a software and web developer. What’s more, you will also have worked as an IT manager, and written all the software used by a manufacturing company to run their business. Code you are going to write will be used in the future by big companies all over the country. Hundreds if not thousands of people will rely on it to do their job. You will be regarded as a great software developer by your peers, and an outstanding web developer.
You’re going to love the web.
The next one is huge. You’re going to have three children. Three little girls. They will be fantasticthey’ll make you smile, laugh, and occasionally shout. The eldest will love roller skating, and playing the violin, the middle one will have the loudest voice in the known universe, and the youngest is going to be troubleshe will be blonde, pretty, and will know it.
You will write a journal on the internet. Compuservethat you’re thinking about joining at the momentwill not last for many yearsthe internet will become generally available, and the “web” will be invented at CERN. They will become your primary means of communicating with friends, colleagues and associates.
You are going to have friends all over the world. You will regard some of them as being as close as those in the “real world”. You will catch up with each other almost every day. You don’t want to know how many computers you’re going to have around the house.
Your life is going to change enormouslyyou are going to be happy, have a fantastic family, and lots of friends. You’re going to be busyyou’re going to work all over the countrysometimes overseasand you’re going to love your work.
It’s all good. Look forward to it all.