A nice little letter

03Sep08

I got an email today from a guy named Sean, who was responding to an article I wrote last year. It struck me as oddly beautiful, as though carved from a short story.

Hi, after a wonderful day getting in an argument with my boss about wearing an apron equip with a feather duster so I could effectively do everyone’s jobs today I decided to come home to do a little surfing. I figured this was a sign to get the hell out of the dead end life I had been leading up to this point. I had always loved film, video games and pretty much all technology. I had gone to school for cinematography for as long as I could afford to, but the end to that came sooner that anticipated. I figured what the hell, I want a job where I get to play, so in my desperate search to find a job lacking any real skill or responsibility where I can make easy money. I thought, a game tester sounds fun, I like games. In my search I ran across all the typical “breakdown jobs”. You know the work from home and make millions in 4 hours scam that feeds off of your lack of ability to cope with the dictatorial structure of the corporate world. Lucky enough for me, I am not that desperate… Yet! While I’m desperately looking for a way out I came across your story, I normally don’t read much more than a few sentences and almost never read a book. The longest book I’ve read is on quantum mechanics in my feeble attempt to grow a brain. Yet for some reason I read on. Your story reminded me of my own life all rapped up in one very conveniently shitty job. Although I’ve had many shitty jobs, this one I’ve not had and still feel like I’ve worked. OK I lost half of what I wrote so I’ll just sum it up for ya, loved your story keep writing more, your job sounds like fun I want a piece of the action, and hopefully I’ll get out of this random funk I’m in so I will stop bugging complete strangers. Thanks.

The moral of the story: write to journalists more. Please. You’d be surprised at how few letters we get, but how much bitching about newspapers and the media I hear from people otherwise railing against the ‘MSM.’ Maybe your letter to Rupert Murdoch will go unread, but why not just write to the guy at the Wall Street Journal — since his email is at the end of the story — and get him to think for a second? Nothing wrong with that.

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Tags: correspondence, email, journalism, letters, Media, writing