…Aaaaaand We’re Back!

When I did a hitch in the Army almost 40 years ago, we were taught to say, “No excuse, Sir.” Back then it seemed a little stupid to me. I mean, I was 20 and could think of a thousand lame excuses for just about anything I was capable of screwing up. But now, at this stage in my life, it seems like a pretty good rule of thumb: No excuses. So, the best I can do in explaining my recent absence to those of you who have taken the time to read my first efforts at blogging – though not at commentary since I made my living as a newsman and commentator for over two decades – is not make excuses. The fact is that crap happens…life happens – work, personal stuff, things that lead from one day to another, inexorably tying you up with what you have to do instead of what you want to do - and the best laid plans of mice and men end up getting caught in the stampede.

‘Work’, for me, has always been about writing too, just not always what I want to be writing. So ‘want to’ and ‘have to’ aren’t, technically speaking, all that far apart. But in terms of sentiment, of being in a place where I feel warm and fuzzy and truly at home, the distance between one and the other is light-years.

Anyway, I’ve made a promise to myself – and I make it now to you too – that I’m going to try and start doing more ‘want to’, because there comes a time in life when you suddenly realize that the cemeteries are full of indispensable people and that ‘have to’ is really more like ‘ought to’…but maybe just not today and maybe only if it lets you get in a little ‘want to’ along with it. And with me, writing this column is a definite ‘want to’. So like I say, we’re back…and sorry to have walked off without a word to those who have honored me by listening when I’ve had something to say.