The following is made up of excerpts from a letter I wrote to my dad 
on a particularly longwinded evening in the spring of 1998. It was in 
response to a letter where he mentioned (among other things) that 
he was thinking about writing a book.
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I say go for it. From someone who has written 3 feature length films 
[never made] and is 70 pages down on a book [The Yonomicon], I 
can give you the following advice... discipline. You have to force 
yourself to do it after the first 2 nights. Of course a non-fiction 
book about something other than what you can pull solely out of 
your head is going to be a majority research, so it'll be a different 
monster. But still, I just say that because I have a bunch of friends 
that are 20 pages into about 12 different scripts, but only 2 who 
have actually finished any (1 who has finished more than 1). So if 
you decide to write it, don't think of it as product, think of it as 
process. Which is very valid. Writers are like guys who fix up old 
cars: They don't do it for the car, they do it for the fun of doing it. 
That's why often as soon as they finish, they'll sell the car and start 
on another one (guys who work on cars, not writers). You may be 
working towards an end, but it's the working, not the end that is the 
purpose. So go for it. I've learned as much writing about a subject as 
I do reading about it. And it's a blast.

You know what I was just thinking... I was just rereading your mail 
and you were talking about habits and ruts. Now both of us have the 
same knowledge and I'm sure our genetic make up is more similar 
than not, but I think the reason I've been able to avoid getting into 
any specific behavioral ruts is that my life is very turbulent and 
disposable. And I don't have any real comfort zone. See, you're life 
doesn't change. You've had the same job and
wife for decades. I've had... not counting day work and free lance 
stuff... 7 jobs in the last 5 years. And I've moved (starting with going 
to college) 5 times. I haven't sat anywhere long enough to leave an 
ass-dent. Now obviously that's not completely true, habits can form 
really quickly, but the point is that change instigates change. Your 
life has no major changes, thus the minor ones can't cling to 
anything.

There's also a certain evolutionary aspect here. This makes sense... 
Evolution  is: new deviation, if it works it stays, if it doesn't the 
organism dies and nature tries again. Thus if there's no 
reproduction, death or deviation, there's no evolution. My life is 
constantly dying and reproducing (and I keep it deviating). Your life 
doesn't do that. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. This is that 
comfort zone which I mentioned. You have a good job, a great wife 
and stability. I'm sure my life wouldn't evolve as much as it does if I 
had something worth keeping alive. I used to have this work table 
that I had made the legs of out of PVC piping. Now the PVC piping 
wasn't all that tightly joined so the thing used to creak a little. When 
I moved to Cali, I threw out the legs and built some new ones, cost 
me maybe fifty bucks after all was said and done. If I had a work 
table that was old and valuable and it creaked I'd have to endure it, 
because I wouldn't throw it out. (I have to admit, I'm really writing 
to hear myself at this point, this is an interesting idea)

Tangent... I think it's funny, so many of my best insights have been 
seemingly obvious when they happen. I'll be explaining something 
and simply connect facts I already know or go some where in a rant.

A cool thing about writing on computers is that you can leave 
yourself notes about what to write next, go on a tangent and come 
back to what you were saying without losing anything. Which brings 
my back to a story. I was talking to one of my friends, Jane, earlier 
in the week. She lives at home, been there since she graduated from 
college in August. Been fiddle farting around and basically 
miserable. She has no push in any direction. She knows she should 
be doing something else, and she hates not to, but she just doesn't 
have enough energy to reach escape velocity. This comes from two 
sources. First she's had much of her life handed to her, by her 
parents and by fate. I don't begrudge her that, but it really does 
make it tough to take your blows. Now I know I've had a more than 
my share of gifts and blessings, but I still have had to eat at least my 
share of s**t. Despite what Nic thinks, my life wasn't handed to me 
on a platter with parsley and a side of cream sauce. Now this is a 
double whammy with Jane because now that's she's at home, she 
has a comfort level, an ass-dent, and no tolerance to get over the 
initial discomfort of change and risk. Although her life is bad (23 
with her parents, no friends, no life, deplorable job, etc.) it's even 
worse to get up and leave and like I said, she doesn't have enough 
practice taking her licks to suffer it, since she's always been able to 
avoid any real risk. Eventually she will. Something will come along 
and provide the energy, problem is it'll probably be a stick of 
dynamite under her seat. Another thing she's doing, that 99% of 
everyone does, is underestimate the discomfort of change. Change 
and risk are not easy. Even if it's for the better, it's still a negative 
that no one wants to take on. Feels funny, not right, you want to 
avoid it, basic programming. If she realized that the change was the 
source of discomfort and tackled that, she'd more effectively be 
able to muster the courage it's going to take for her to get out of 
her rut and on with her life. Oh well, not that you know her or care, 
but I thought I'd tell you a story.

XXXXXXXXXXX

I'll go on a rant some other time, but it's a pattern I'm seeing in 
many of my friends. The term "growing up" is attached to it. I hate 
it. Realizing that my warped world view is mine alone, I've come to 
the conclusion that I hate "growing up" because you lose what's cool 
about being a kid and I either don't have or don't enjoy what's good 
about being an adult. Needless to say I'm being studied by a UCLA 
grad student doing her thesis on Peter Pan complexes. But hey, I 
don't have to be mature. It's that responsibility-free life again. I'm 
going to enjoy it while I have it.

So ya planned any bar-b-cues yet? See you vicariously live a young 
LA life through me and I vicariously live a home-owning, chill-in-the-
backyard-Florida-life through you. And you just aren't throwing 
enough relaxed social occasions to keep up your end of the bargain. 
(Of course I haven't exactly been coming back with tales of Fear and 
Loathing in Los Angeles...) Some pals of mine were trying to come up 
with a theme for a party they're throwing in a few weeks. We've had 
no success. It has to do with the fact that it's a general party instead 
of a group of invited people who know each other. Themes are fun, 
but require participation. Tough without prior enthusiasm. I have 2 
parties which I want to throw when I have a host-able pad. First was 
one that a friend of mine at UNC Chaplehill went to. It was a 
Halloween party where everyone had to wear either edible costumes 
or some edible article and everyone had to go around introducing 
themselves to each other and when you introduced yourself to 
someone you had to take a bite out of their costume. The other one 
is a dinner party I once read about. It reflects an old Chinese parable 
you told me once. The parable being the one about the guy seeing 
hell as a place where the people where put in front of a wonderful 
spread of food, but not being able to get the food into their mouths 
because their chopsticks were longer than their arms and Heaven 
was an identical spread of food and the chopsticks were arm length, 
but the people were feeding each other. The thing is a huge pot luck 
dinner party where you can only feed other people and no one can 
put food in their own mouths.