To Whom it May Concern

How's it going universe? I decided to up the ante on my target audience. The world is no longer enough. From now on, any being in the universe is invited to read my broadcast.

So I'm not sure if I've told you yet, but I'm going to Rio de Jafuckingneiro in May. I don't know how I should feel about that. Oh, wait, yeah I do. I should feel amazing about that.

Here's how this is gonna play out. Currently, Rio is just too far away to get stoked for. I know I have a tendency of getting crazy stoked like several months before I should. The current record is a 172 day countdown to my 2011 Spring Break Cruise. That was an intense 172 days let me tell ya. Hold on a second...

Ok so I just plugged Rio into a countdown app and get this shit...155 days. Meaning even if I got stoked for Rio right now, it'd still be a shorter countdown than SB11. I like that. Maybe I should just start the countdown now and get the stokedness rolling early. We'll see. Rio will be the most insane summer(winter) nightlife I have yet to experience. To put this in perspective, my favorite city in the WHOLE DAMN WORLD has one of the worlds best beaches and nightlife and it is still second only to Rio to Janeiro. So this will be an interesting trip.

And then after Rio, Karen and I have some other trips planned. Cambodia? Seoul? THE ATLANTA AIRPORT? A 14 HOUR DATE WITH AN A380!!!??? So yeah it'll be an eventful summer. Even if half of the shit that's about to go down gets completely canceled, it will still be by far the best summer I have ever lived. And I've lived some amazing summers, so the thought of topping everything once again just blows my mind.

So I was thinking last night. This isn't out of the ordinary. I think a lot. I think constantly about something and I think that's why I'm able to pull off about 4 vacations a year and make thousands in the stock market. I'm getting off track.

So I was thinking last night. I was reminiscing in the times in high school, before this blog existed, when I would track my thoughts by writing in other forms. One of the most popular would be letters addressed to my future self. Of course I had other travel journals and transcripts of conversations and sometimes just notepad documents of stories I'd record but some of the most memorable documents in my library of self-recorded history were my Letters to Self.

Here's how it worked. I would pick a date that I knew would be a good day (such as before Spring Break), and write a letter which I would avoid reading until then. So on a random day I felt like writing, I would write. Perhaps the most peculiar aspect of the letters, is that I wrote them as I would a school assignment: perfect grammar, thesis statements, proper use of transitions, etc. I put a lot of effort to make each letter a well-constructed reflection so that even as I read it for the 10th time when I've graduated college I still am able to reclaim the feelings of joy which overcame me every few months.

 The first was I believe prior to my junior year Spring Break, in which I had a bad time at a school dance and threw my frustration into literature addressed to me. Almost every letter was intended to be read just before a vacation. It would link the lengthy gap between frustrated present-me and Cloud-9 future-me. I could get out any frustrations I had, but then I could regain hope that in just a few months I'll be on a plane anticipating a great week.

The system worked pretty well to keep my happiness and excitement at high levels while masking the boredom of waiting. Writing each letter was fun, it gave me something to look forward to. It kept my spirits high knowing that the next time I read my work I would be flying off to the Caribbean Sea. I would crank the space heater in my room and light beach-scented candles and listen to my vacation music and spend several hours crafting a string of words that would make my future self happier than he already was. The writing of the letter was a vacation in itself.

Once I finished the letter, I would format a blank page in front of the essay reading "Dear Decker," followed by the date I planned on opening it. The blank page would keep me from accidentally reading some of the letter too soon. I'd then save the word document, drop it in a folder, and go about my day. Then there would always be several months of waiting. As the months flew by, I would gradually forget every word I wrote in the letter and anticipation to reread what I had written began to accumulate.

Then, whenever I had decided to read it, I would read it. Almost always it was on an airplane. I'd usually wait until we were near cruising altitude and I had a cran-apple cocktail in my hand. Then I'd casually unfold my letter, and rip off the blank cover page. I could never help but smile as I read about how great it must feel to be on vacation and cruising on a 737 enroute to Miami.

But as I said, the letters to self were replaced. I haven't written one since Spring Break 2011. I guess in a way, each of my 242 posts on this blog are a letter to myself. And I'll read each post several times before I die and remember how it felt to be a high schooler, in college, in pilot training, and hopefully an airline pilot. Still, I miss the letters to self. They had a sense mystery to them, as if I were time travel into the future to deliver a letter to myself. Inversely, reading the letters felt as if I my past self were talking right to me. It was like a conversation linking the two parallel Deckers, as if I sat down with myself over a glass of scotch and just chatted about going on a cruise.

I think I'll continue the letters to self. I think I'll write one addressed to me headed to LA or Rio. I'll follow the same guidelines as I did in high school, put effort into it, and have an enjoyable read on my 767 flight to the beach.

Until next time...

Fiction is Synonymous With 'Bullshit'

Howdy ho beautiful world! I had an unnecessary amount of logic homework to crunch through real quick, taking away from my blog time. But...ya know... priorities and shit. It's finally December. Last year around this time I was getting pretty stoked over going to Morocco and Span and Portugal but unfortunately all my big trips coming up this time around aren't for another six months.

I can only assume that much has happened in the past several weeks since I've blogged last. One of the bigger occurrences as of late is my involvement in a ResLife showdown. It's a story for another day, probably in a year or so when I can make it sound a lot funnier. It's quite similar to the Norton Commons fiasco; my employers seem to have trouble keeping a leash on me. Oh well, it all makes for great stories at little to no sacrifice.

I absolutely love stories by the way. I imagine that you could easily gather that by reading a few blog posts of mine, but there's nothing like a great story being told by someone. Whether it's written in pen and ink in the hotel lobby located in the cute town of God-knows-where, Earth or told compassionately over a glass of Dewar's, I always enjoy hearing and telling a good story.

Mainly telling. Unless it's a gripping tale told by an enthusiastic chronicler that has me in disbelief and wanting more, listening to some story about something that's not even remotely cool can often turn into a yawn-fest. Instead, I almost always prefer to be the storyteller and have the tonal power and charisma to drop jaws with tale after tale of science and adventure.

However anyone can just sit down and spout off some fiction bullshit they made up to impress and captivate everyone in the room. That's cheating. No. The story must be true, and that's why I'm always prepared and fully willing to follow the path which yields me the best story. That's why I'm stoked about going to third world countries and always ready to throw down in some fairly dangerous places.

By the time I'm like 30 years old, I'm going to have a massive repertoire of stories that I can just toss out onto the table at any moment. I'll have like fifteen stories from every continent. It's gonna be awesome.

Ok I'm running out of time. Sorry, I've been like half paying attention to this, have paying attention to trading. I'm getting a little bit more engaged with the stock market. It's starting to make me a pretty damn good chunk of change. I like money too much to not figure out ways to get rich. And here I am about to go to class after checking my stock earnings of about two grand over the past three weeks. Money money money money. Money!

And I kind of promised Karen that I'd take her to Los Angeles over Spring Break (or perhaps Summer) if I can pull a few thou from my ass. So that's looking likely at this point. It really blows my mind that I get stressed and have days where I feel awful and stripped of confidence once I consider how great my life looks on paper. I am doing fine. But that doesn't stop me from losing all grips of hope occasionally.

Maybe on those days I should just count my money and tell stories.