cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Diane Cluff, Maxine Shirts via mail.
"Well, if the week goes like I have planned, you will have in your hands this Thoughtlet for the first time on Saturday morning, Christmas 1999. The book is the first a hardcopy version of my expressions of love. There have been times over the last 3+ years when I have considered stopping writing out a Thoughtlet each week. However, when I get positive feeback, or when I've asked who wants to continue to receive them, I've always been pleasently suprised and reinvigorated. With over three years under my belt, it seems foolish not to finish out the rest of my life: (1) striving to share insights which can hopefully make your lives better; and (2) leaving a more complete personal history, which will hopefully be of some use to someone as a case history in things to do and things to not do.
Many of us are visual dominant. This means we take information into our brains through our eyes, the highest bandwidth sense we have. However, there are those who are auditory dominate and those who are kinesethic (or touch dominant). Because I am so far off of the scale in visual dominance, I have never worried much about printing out hardcopy of what is on the screen for those who like to hold, turn pages, lift, and feel maps or cross-sections or the pages of a book. Landmark was continually getting in trouble with customers because the hardcopy functionality was so poor. Think about how much harder problem this is for Continuum, since the models we build are multi-dimensional data sets which vary across time!
As you know from my library, I believe it is important to have access to the real, physical, tangible stuff, and not just viewing access to ethereal digital letters and words. You may not want to have this hardcopy book of Thoughtlets on your your shelf. And that's OK. You can return it, or burn it, and it is your choice. I do strive very hard to show the length and width and height and depth and unbounded time of my love. As you disburse across the universe (currently North America) these Thoughtlets are the best way I have found to show how much I care. You can't hear my prayers each night. Even though I feel like I see them answered in your individual lives. You can't read my thoughts each day. I know how much time I spend working on and thinking about and pondering over my family, the most important component of my life. So if I provide a consistent expression of love, I remain optimistic you will: (1) learn some usefull things; and (2) hear the essence of message when the time and circumstances are right.
So here is a book as a hardcopy Christmas present. Hopefully it shows to each of you in a very personal and in a very direct way how much I love you. It does take a real and lasting motivation to write these Thoughtlets out each week. I'm certainly not doing it for the money. I'm not doing it for fame nor nortoriety. I'm doing it because I love each one of you, because I want you each to come to know me so you can come to love me too, because I hope to start and keep open a dialog with those who are most important to me, and because once I start something I stick to it until the job is complete. Even, or maybe I should say especially, if the job isn't complete until my death.
As we have the opportunity to usher in a new millenium, according to the arbitrary calendar's of mankind, it is my prayer we can all learn to communicate by means of the spiritual realm, and at those times when we need hardcopy to provide a basis for our decisions it will be available. I hope you will each take the time to look over and learn from the hard learned lessons of my life as you face cross-roads in your own lives. I particularly hope this manual will provide some guidance for each of you, in a very personal and individual way. Sort of how the scriptures provide me guidance and direction.
Happy Christmas, Merry New Year, and have a wonderfull next millenium."