Category / Correspondence

by ravelingoutko

Open Letter to the Construction Team Outside my Office

Dear Construction Team,
I would like to thank you for being here bright and early on a Monday morning to help me out.  Thanks for bringing your drills, hammers, and jackhammers and creating suck an unbealievably awesomely loud racket just five feet outside my office door.  You’ve not only managed to keep me wide fucking awake on this grey and rainy morning but you’ve also managed to distract me from the essays I’m supposed to be reading.
I’d also like to commend you for managing to bring in not one employee but five – FIVE EMPLOYEES – to stand around the giant hole in the wall and chat.  In These Tough Economic Times I would expect you to be downsizing.  After all, who can really afford extra workmen these days? But you guys are willing to go the extra mile no matter the cost, no matter the inefficiency.
Construction Team, here’s to you!
Ear-ringingly yours,
Dr. Vague

Dear Construction Team,

I would like to thank you for being here bright and early on a Monday morning to help me out.  Thanks for bringing your drills, hammers, and jackhammers and creating such an unbealievably awesomely loud racket just five feet outside my office door.  You’ve not only managed to keep me wide fucking awake on this grey and rainy morning but you’ve also managed to distract me from the essays I’m supposed to be reading.

I’d also like to commend you for managing to bring in not one employee but five – FIVE EMPLOYEES – to stand around the giant hole in the wall and chat.  In These Tough Economic Times I would expect you to be downsizing.  After all, who can really afford extra workmen these days? But you guys are willing to go the extra mile no matter the cost, no matter the inefficiency.

Construction Team, here’s to you!

Ear-ringingly yours,

Dr. Vague

by ravelingoutko

Open Letter to a Bag of Discount Spinach

Dear Bag of Discount Spinach,

When I saw you in the produce section, neon yellow tag proclaiming that you were a rare and sought-after 99-cent manager’s special, I snatched you from the cooler with a quickness.  As I held you up to the light, inspecting your slightly wilted leaves, I looked upon you with the eyes of a hopeful lover.

I saw the good in you; I saw the fresh, beautiful, dark green leaves hiding among the wilted and slimy ones.  I saw your flaws, but with the naïveté I’ve often been known to exhibit, I thought I could change you. I thought I could save you.

Fine, I’ll admit I then forgot about you for a few days and I’m sorry for that.  Those nights spent alone and neglected in the depths of my crisper drawer must have been hellish. You must have felt so lost and alone as I passed over you time and time again in search of other foods.  But when I remembered you again, Discount Spinach, I tried! I really tried to make up for my neglect.

We spent so much time together then, you and I. Tonight, my arms sunk within your verdant depths, I sought out only the best in you.  I carefully extracted each leaf from within your plastic cloak, painstakingly separating the soggy scraps of rotten leaves from the healthy ones. When I had finished exploring every inch of you,  I observed with great sadness that only a fraction of your former glory remained. The bad leaves outnumbered the good; you had succumbed to a cold and lonely demise.

Was the money I saved by buying a huge bag of discount spinach worth the pain? Not only the pain I caused you, but (let’s face it, more importantly) the pain I suffered by having rotten spinach leaves clinging to my arms during the lengthy salvage mission I was forced to undertake? No. No it wasn’t.

Yours in Iron and Calcium,  but not in Decomposition,

AV

by ravelingoutko

open letter to my twenties

Dear Twenties,

As I am sure you know, the time has come for us to part company.  It’s been a long, lovely ride, but this is my stop and I am getting off.  Goodbye to you, suckas!

Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of things about you that were truly good:  I gave up vegetarianism, for one, and every piece of bacon I now eat tastes just that much more delicious for its long absence.  I was For Real In Love for the first time, which was also a pretty amazing thing.  In retrospect, however, I’d have to say that my relationship with bacon has worked out much better for everyone involved. Except the pigs, of course.

In my twenties I think I also got the friendship thing right:  I managed to keep the really important friendships and ditch the toxic ones.  Learning to recognize the toxic ones alone was a major accomplishment.  For some reason, it took me a while to figure out that if someone’s basic function in your life is to make you feel shitty about yourself, then that person is not a friend.  An ingenious insight, I know.

On the other hand, a lot about you straight up blew, Twenties.  The long-nourished infatuations with people who didn’t love me back (so much wasted time!), the exchange of running for sitting at a desk or on a couch, the mounting student loan and credit card debt — those are fun little mistakes I plan never to repeat.

I hate to tell you Twenties, but I think the Thirties are going to kick your ass up one side and down the other.  I’m no longer a student now, for the first time since before kindergarten.  I have a terminal degree and a real adult job and a dog.  I am at the beginning of my real life now, looking forward to establishing myself professionally and starting to earn a Serious Adult Salary (soon, we hope, right?).

The friendships keep getting better and better and I’m sure the relationships will, too, now that I know what I want out of them.  One lesson learned, relationship-wise, for example: It is not okay if your boyfriend thinks that sitting on his couch smoking pot while you watch him play Nintendo is a fun date activity.  Not okay.

Twenties, I bid you a bittersweet adieu.  I’d love to stay and chat some more, but I have a mission.  I am off to meet the Thirties and together we are going to step out and kick some serious ass. Sorry, Twenties, but it’s over.

Really, finally over,

Vague