On Fire
Time for the old school journalist to step up. I got up late this morning. It’s 7:25. I have to leave in an hour for an appointment and 300 words are waiting to be written. By newspaper standards that’s not much of a challenge. But I’ve gotten a little bit out of step these days, and I tend to lollygag over the words, picking at them until they’re just right and mostly trying to say something profound.
That, however, may well not be the case today. I’m unsure if profundity is a hallmark of being quick witted, which is what I think you have to be if you’re going to knock out and publish a 300 word mini-essay in less than an hour, because since I started typing time has passed. So, the deadline approaches. When I used to do this for a living, I was usually talking about how badly a local high school team had won or lost a football game. Then later on I’d have to opine as to how well some traveling rock star had performed.
Now, days I’m usually giving you, the reader a glimpse inside my rather mundane life. Some people enjoy it. Some people think, what the hell? Just for the record, though, I got my Christmas cards ready to mail yesterday. And! The card is one of my own design. That’s something new. I’ll be addressing them by hand over the coming days. I could have done labels, but that seems a bit to industrial. It’s bad enough that the card has my return address printed on it. And it looks like I’ll be a few words short of 300 but not by much. So, that’s it. I hope everyone has a great day, because I’m going to do my best. Which I think, is all that’s asked of us. And now, I’m over and it’s 7:36.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale