Chuck,

It’s time I write you. I finished revising my website last week (and, yes, there are parts that are awful and slow, but I refuse to work on it anymore), and as I was reading through my archives, I noticed that I have memories from after college because of the letters I wrote you. There were consternations in those letters, but there were also honest truths that I don’t find myself recording anymore. I’m only now figuring out that having a pen pal gave me a reason to record my life, and also provided me the privacy to share certain thoughts that were not yet ripe for a general audience. I hope you don’t mind me using you like this. Besides this ulterior motive, I do want you to know what’s going on in my life, and provide you sufficient words to guilt you into returning the favor.

Life over here is going well. Embarrassingly well, actually. You know that saying—I think it’s Greek or Roman, but it may just as well be Chinese—Die now! When everything in life is going so well that you don’t think it will ever be this good again, and I guess the point is to go out on a high note? It sometimes feels that way. Everything isn’t perfect, of course. It never can be. But overall I begin to see how celebrities end up with terrible cases of narcissism: they see the world around them bowing to their whims and it begins to feel like it was designed just for them. They are the heroes in a story where most characters struggle to survive and find meaning. Now my life is not that good. But I do some days find myself wondering why I deserve this life.

We’re flying to New York City now to visit my family. Tiger is sleeping next to me, which gives me a few quiet moments to put fingers to keys. The big news is that Doolies is pregnant. She’s around 14 weeks and due December 1. Tiger will be past 2 when the dragon baby arrives (yes, Doolies tracks people by the Chinese zodiac—it’s actually a very clever way of remembering how old people are. If you remember their zodiac sign, you can usually figure out their age). We’ll know the gender at the 20-week ultrasound. Seeing as my mother has eight granddaughters and no grandsons, I have my doubts if our side of the family can produce a boy. Either way we’ll be happy. Similar to our decision to have two dogs, we felt it was important for Tiger to have a sibling. (Is it wrong that our parenting decisions are based on our experience with dogs?)

Fatherhood has been a good experience for me. The first nine months or so are tiring, and to be honest, not terribly interesting. Tiger, like all babies, brainwashed us into finding her adorable, even in her bald, wrinkled state. (Not that she was ever wrinkled. According to our best recollection, she came out perfectly cute, the cutest baby in the whole wide world, in fact.) I would be a rich man if I bottled the baby fragrance that brainwashed parents. After the nine month mark, she started to stand and then walk and then talk. It’s still early in her development, but I’m amazed every day that she can do or say something new. I’m a disgustingly proud father. I should be embarrassed by it but I’m not. (I won’t bore you with how at twenty months she recited the alphabet, identified the letters (both capital and lowercase), and counted to twenty. Wait, too late.)

There is a downside to children: the time. I used to have much more time to fret over blank pages and create. I fondly remember Sundays spent in quiet coffee shops pounding out words or doodling colorful shapes. I don’t have that opportunity anymore. Now I shouldn’t completely blame Tiger for it. Work plays a big part in sucking time and creative energy. But not wanting to waste time I could be spending with Tiger certainly is a big part of my lack of production.

This silent commercial break is brought to you by Tiger waking up on the flight and interrupting my frantic typing. In case you didn’t notice the change in scenery, more than five days have passed and I’m now back in Seattle and ready to blab more about useless things like my life.

Moving past babies, I just read your last entry on liminality.com. I was disappointed that you weren’t stopping by the west coast. Hopefully we’ll catch up one of these days. I did, of course, pre-order your book on Amazon (Kindle edition). I may have to order the regular edition also so you have something to sign the next time I see you. As always I am very excited to read your writing.

I haven’t been visiting your website as often as in the past. Don’t take it personally. I stopped using Google Reader to track RSS feeds since, even after major pruning, I felt a slave to clearing my queue every day. It felt wonderful to stop looking at my feeds and just visit websites directly when I want to read something. The downside of this freedom is I don’t receive any indication of your (way too infrequent) updates. I installed an RSS feeder at work to track your updates. Hopefully that works out and you end up posting more.

I’m hoping that you heard that Scott passed away on April 15. There was an attempt to stream the funeral but it didn’t work. Even now I’m not sure what to say about it. News like this is supposed to make you stop and think and reconsider your life, I guess. It didn’t. It was sad and unfair and terrible. But it’s also part of life, the good parts and these bad parts. As I mentioned before, I was looking through my website and I found these two gems: Photos from College and OGG's story. I wish I had taken more photographs during college (actually, during much of my pre-Doolies life). But I’m happy to have some recorded memories.

Work continues to go well. Not sure where I last left off my saga, but I’m now the lead attorney for Microsoft Studios. We make video games and entertainment for Xbox and other Microsoft platforms. I have a small team under me that continues to grow, and I’m up for a promotion over the next few months. They pay me well and I get to (help) make video games, which has always been one of my dreams. I’m not sure how long I will stay, though. I’ve been at Microsoft for almost eight years now, which is a long time for me to be anywhere.

I still have this dream of starting my own company, perhaps a small, mobile video game development house. Before we found out about the new baby, Doolies and I were considered moving to Taiwan for a few years. Given Taiwan’s job market and relatively low wages—not to mention free rent at one of Doolies’s parents’ office buildings—I thought about starting this company. I even went so far as to pull together a business plan and jot down a few game ideas (although, the key to the business will be fast iterations and lots of early releases—develop, release, and then expand on what works). We started looking into American schools for Tiger and thinking about where we would live. Then we found out about baby number two, and we decided to put a hold on Plan T. The health insurance at my job is too good to take risks. I’m sure my mother is breathing a sigh of relief (even if I didn’t tell her about it yet).

So that catches you up to where I am. We’re heading into summer here in Seattle after a wet and cold winter. Life is sort of on pause now: work is busy and Tiger is growing, but the year of pregnancy is a time of holding my breath. For the first three months I fantasize about things not going right (most miscarriages happen during the first trimester). Now that we’re past the largest risk period we’re entering the second trimester (also known as the “honeymoon” period), where Doolies should have more energy—even if she still gets up to go to the bathroom every few hours during the night. Now it’s about waiting and planning and chasing after Tiger, who now thinks there’s a baby in everyone’s belly.

I hope this letter finds you well and happy and probably travelling to fun places.

-David