Three days ago, WordPress asked me this:
If your future self could send you one sentence, what do you hope it would say?
Today, WordPress asks:
If you had a time machine and could send just one message to your past self, what would it say?
Apparently, the Daily Prompt department has discovered time travel, but only one setting.
I suppose there is technically a difference between receiving a message from my future self and sending one to my past self. But we’re splitting some pretty fine temporal hairs here. Either way, somebody is reaching through the space-time continuum to offer advice to another version of me.
And apparently we needed to revisit that concept after a three-day cooling-off period.
My future self might tell me to ignore that first prompt, but by the time I received the message, it would already be too late. Then I’d probably spend another three days wondering whether ignoring the prompt would create some kind of paradox that destroyed the universe.
That seems like a lot of responsibility for a WordPress blog post.
I just hope whoever writes these Daily Prompts has a future self who can send them a message, too:
You already asked this question three days ago.
Maybe that future version could also toss in a few other helpful reminders while they have the time machine fired up. Check the calendar. Review the recent prompts. Maybe don’t ask everyone to solve the mysteries of time, regret, wisdom, and personal growth twice in the same week.
I’m not saying I expect a completely original philosophical question every morning. There are only so many ways to ask people what they think about life before somebody circles back around to, “What advice would you give yourself?”
But three days?
At least make me wait long enough to forget my answer.
So I’m not going to manufacture a brand-new revelation just because WordPress turned the time machine around and pointed it in the opposite direction. I already answered the question. My message hasn’t suddenly become wiser in the past 72 hours, and present-day me is not going to compete with three-days-ago me for the more profound response.
If you really want to know what message I’d send through time, just go back three days and read that post.
Which, come to think of it, seems entirely appropriate.
No DeLorean required.
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Copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt
