This is the last paper letter from me to George and Helen\u2014a two-page single-spaced computer-printed letter. I probably sent them a few emails several years later, but this may have been the last substantial thing I sent them.<\/p>\r\n
\r\n9 April 1993<\/p>\r\n
Dear Grandma & Grandpa,<\/p>\r\n
Thank you for the birthday card. I don\u2019t have time to write a long letter right now, but I\u2019m trying to get into the habit of sending people short notes occasionally to let them know I still exist. My usual approach is to write long detailed letters describing everything that\u2019s going on in my life; but such letters take weeks to write, and they\u2019re usually outdated by the time I send them anyway.<\/p>\r\n
I meant to send you birthday greetings, too, Grandpa, or even (gasp!) call; but the past few weeks have been even busier than usual and I lost track of the time in the bustle. Sorry.<\/p>\r\n
As always, I\u2019ve been keeping myself busy to the point of overload. I don\u2019t know if Peter has told you about my current job; in case not, my contract ended at Apple back in September, and after a couple of months lazing around with friends on beaches I landed this job as a contract technical writer at Silicon Graphics (also known as SGI), where my housemate Arthur also works (and in fact, I\u2019m in the same group as Arthur, working on the same book). (The Apple contract ended rather abruptly\u2014they told me three weeks before it ended that they were going to renew it, and then two weeks later, a week before it ended, they told me they weren\u2019t renewing any contractors\u2019 contracts after all. Annoying, but I had been planning to leave that job anyway; I didn\u2019t like the job or Redacted by Jed<\/span>, and I felt underappreciated (and relatively underpaid\u2014I was the lowest-paid person in the group\u2014even though I was certainly making significantly more than I needed to live on).) This new SGI job pays far better than the one at Apple, and I\u2019m making significant progress towards my goal of saving up enough money to live on for a year and a half. (Once I\u2019ve got that saved, I intend to take a year off from work to write pretty much full-time and travel around the country seeing friends. The extra six months\u2019 living money is for padding to give me time to find a new job at the end of that year.)<\/p>\r\n
Arthur and I have been through three housemates during the year-and-a-half we\u2019ve rented this place; they\u2019ve each moved out to live with someone else (a boyfriend, a husband, and a fianc\u00e9e, respectively). Our latest housemate is another friend of ours from high school, SName redacted by Jed<\/span>, who abruptly had to leave her previous residence; details redacted by Jed<\/span>. We had an extra room, she needed a place to live, we didn\u2019t want to keep splitting three people\u2019s worth of rent two ways, so it seemed like a good deal all around.<\/p>\r\n
Outside of work, I\u2019ve started taking Aikido again. Joaquin and I took this Japanese \u201cmartial art\u201d (which I say with quotation marks because its entire philosophy is about as nonviolent as a martial art could get) when I was about ten, and ever since then I\u2019ve wanted to go back to it. A few months ago my friend Kristen started going (to the same teacher, it turns out, that Peter used to go to when he took Aikido down here ten or fifteen years ago), and eventually she got me to go along. I enjoy it a great deal most of the time, but I\u2019m having to take some time away from it because it\u2019s starting to hurt my back. I\u2019m hoping to see a doctor about that sometime next week.<\/p>\r\n
I\u2019ve also been taking a Piloting Ground School class once a week, taught by a certified flight instructor who works at SGI. I\u2019ve always wanted to be a pilot, or at least to fly; it\u2019s turning out to be a lot more complicated than I imagined, and this class only prepares students to take the written exam; after you do that you have to have actual in-plane training, and at the current costs of instructors\u2019 time and rental time for small planes it can cost $4000-$6000 to get a pilot\u2019s license. Which is money I can\u2019t really afford to spend right now; so I\u2019m just going to complete the ground school, take the written test, and hold off on the actual learning to fly part until I can afford it (the test results are valid for a year or two, so I do have a little leeway).<\/p>\r\n
So all of that has been taking up most of my time. The rest of my time tends to be spent talking with friends, reading, or occasionally writing\u2014I\u2019ve done far too little fiction writing in the past 18 months, and I\u2019m trying to force myself back into it, with mixed success so far.<\/p>\r\n
Anyway, it\u2019s late and I\u2019m tired and the end of the page has arrived, so I\u2019ll sign off here. Thanks again for the card; hope all\u2019s well with you.<\/p>\r\n
Love,<\/p>\r\n
Jed<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
Notes<\/h2>\r\n
\r\n
- \u201ctrying to get into the habit of sending people short notes occasionally to let them know I still exist\u201d<\/dt>\r\n
- I\u2019ve written similar things, possibly using that exact wording, many times since then, to many people. In the thirty years since I wrote this letter, I still have not yet gotten into that habit, but hope springs eternal.<\/dd>\r\n
- busy-ness<\/dt>\r\n
- I\u2019m amused that right after saying I was \u201cbusy to the point of overload,\u201d I went on to talk about having recently spent a couple months lounging about on beaches.<\/dd>\r\n
- Apple job<\/dt>\r\n
- I was working at Apple as a contractor, doing QA for A\/UX, Apple\u2019s first version of Unix, which was so little-known that we liked to refer to it as \u201cApple\u2019s best-kept secret.\u201d<\/dd>\r\n
- \u201ctake a year off from work\u201d<\/dt>\r\n
- I did end up doing this! But not until three years later. For more about that, see my Wanderjahr<\/a> journal.<\/dd>\r\n
- Aikido<\/dt>\r\n
- Jay and I had done some Aikido as kids, and I had been interested in getting back to it since 1991 or earlier, partly as a way to reduce the likelihood of finding myself in a situation where I would want to call the police.<\/dd>\r\n
- Sadly, at some point not long after this letter, I hurt my shoulder doing a forward roll. I think it took a while to heal, and by the time it did, I was no longer enthusiastic about Aikido, and I don\u2019t think I ever went back.<\/dd>\r\n
- pilot\u2019s license<\/dt>\r\n
- I never followed through on this. Which may be just as well; I had a very hard time staying awake during ground school, so I might not have had a really solid grasp on things.<\/dd>\r\n<\/dl>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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