(Excerpted from a letter to Chuck.)

I am happy to report (for the first time in a very long time) that I have interesting things in my OWN life of which to write about. My life has actually been moving along quite rapidly (although not to the extent of some lucky, blood-sucking bastard.) I am now officially a working slob. The job in DC came through, and I moved down here and started work last Wednesday.

The Friday before I started work I found an apartment in Virginia. While I'm not one to brag, this apartment is incredible. It's located in a gorgeous apartment complex with a valet, and consier desk. The apartment is an efficiency (which is like a studio, except it's shaped weird, and has a dressing room -- i.e., a very long hallway with one wall made up of closets.) The kitchen is incredible. It has a GAS range and oven (no more burnt plates!), a dishwasher and garbage disposal, and enough room for my small kitchen table (with matching high-quality plastic chairs).

The main room is shaped like an 'L'. My bed is in the lower part, and the outside door is at the top with the dressing room branching off to the left next to the door, and the bathroom beyond the dressing room. I have a beautiful queen sized bed, and a plant. I'm also the proud owner of a desk and a futon, and a hell of a lot of empty space. The apartment is a block away from a price club and an underground mall, three blocks away from a full sized mall, and across the street from the metro station (the amazingly clean, fast DC subway system).

Regrettably, I have to occasionally leave my apartment to go to work. My job isn't horrible. I don't lug boxes or do other such menial work (e.g. Scott's job), but it's not exactly fun. I write support programs for a large database called ERIS (get this: Expatriate Resource Informational System ' joy.) I also help upgrade and debug this database. It's written in Lotus Notes (which is a glorified Word Processor / Spreadsheet with good network support.) I am happy to report that I am damn good at the job. They gave me a project which I guess they expected me to do within a week or so (it was in a language I did not know at the time), suffice to say it was done by the end of the day. I'm a genius, what can I say? Or perhaps they're just uneducated, overpaid sorry-excuses for programmers. Either way it looks good for me.

Getting up at about 7am is not one of the favorite parts of my job. The worst is coming home and being totally exhausted from doing pretty much nothing the whole day. Most of the time I get to sleep at 10pm. Sad, huh? I of course got cable, although it is very sorry looking on my 13' TV. I am hoping to buy a spanking new SONY Trinitron 27' next month. That is if I survive this first month.

I have to tell you that you have not lost your flair for the English language yet. I was totally enthralled by your letter (all 30 pages of it.) It got me thinking about my own pitiful existence. Sigh. I was kind of hoping to avoid the deeper thought for a while. But, it seems quite impossible now.

I am glad that you have found your niche in life. And that girls are crawling all over your Asian Lust Monkey body. Not to mention about your travel, your jobs, your new apartment. Sorry Shannon, it seems that I have a new vicariously-live-through-buddy-because-my-life-sucks Idol. He is by the way still planning on writing you. He is just incredibly busy with Med. School (at least that's what he told me to say.) He broke up with Deb after they decided it was better that way. He seems to have moved on (I had spoken with him after they had just broken up, and he was pretty miserable. I then spoke with him last week, and of course he was working on his newest conquest. Sigh.) So expect a letter from him eventually, although don't hold your breath waiting--although that really wouldn't hurt you much, so actually it might be kind of fun.

After contemplating my miserable existence (you can see how my mind flows logically from point to point, never getting sidetracked with extraneous thoughts) I have decided that I have not a clue what I want to do with the rest of my life. Well, at least the rest of this life. My law school applications are being sent out again (with hopes of five more rejections, just to test out the little window in my head.) To tell you the truth, I'm not really sure if I want to go to law school. To be absolutely honest, I have no fucking clue how I want to spend the rest of my life. Being transported to a different world tops my fantasy list. I just can't seem to find anything that I feel would be fulfilling and interesting. Very sad.

I think it's becoming more than sad lately. I sit around and just think about what life can possibly hold for me, and I come up very empty. Don't worry, I'm not contemplating suicide (it's extremely awkward to slice off one's own head.) But, I do sense that something is missing within me. The problem of course is in finding what that grander purpose which I'm missing is. And the fact that I haven't had a deep philosophical discussion in a number of weeks is becoming quite a drag as well. Sigh.