I've decided that I've so far gone through all of the topics of interest of which I have adequate knowledge to write that I shall no longer be able to come up with new and original columns.

Given that fact, I find myself with few options. Either I can rehash old ideas and hope no one can remember them anyway, I can continue to give true details about my life (ad nauseum), or I can somehow find something else to write about. The other options, including copying someone else's work or hiring intelligent life forms to take over my job, were quickly ruled out for obvious reasons. First of all, I detest plagiarism and, secondly, I frankly need the money. So that rules out the 10,000 monkeys on 10,000 typewriters pounding out next week's newspaper columns.

So, I find myself on the cusp of brilliance, the edge of my seat, waiting for some new idea to find its way into my mind and travel down the long and tingly path to my fingertips that sit poised on the keyboard awaiting instruction.

Then nothing happened. Well, not exactly nothing, but nothing important. That's when I came to the repeat realization that it really isn't very likely to be something important that comes across this weekly treatise on the life and times of an ordinary fellow. Most things aren't important and those that are may only be important to a few people The rest are just things that someone thinks is important at the point in time before they find something else to worry about.

I've often had a theory that we inflate our problems to fill the important spots in our lives. For instance, what is important for one person might be whether or not a favorite show appears on daytime television or whether or not the race gets rained out, while another might be concerned about saving lives in a hospital ward or battling an epidemic. I always try to find relevance in my problems, deciding how important they are on a larger scale than just my own existence.

One of my friends was telling me the other day that he tries to decide how important problems are based on whether or not the issue will matter in a month, a year or 10 years.

Usually not being able to see that far out, I tend to think that I try to decide how important something is based on how it affects people's lives.

Comments made by me usually don't go through that same filtering process. Being of a reporter's bent, I tend to observe the world around me and offer candid reports of what I see when asked—and sometimes even when not.

I can no more change that fact than I could make the sky turn green. It's just the way I am and either folks like that and enjoy spending time with me or they don't and they don't enjoy spending time with me. I feel pretty sure I'll survive either way. That's another one of those issues of relative importance.

In seeking friendship, I ask myself, "Can I really say whatever I am thinking without this person trying to put a motive behind my words? Can I note something factual without this person thinking I have some hidden agenda?"

That's why I have lots of acquaintances and just a handful of friends. Sadly, there are very few people in this world who always try to think the best of me and my intentions.

Sometimes I get worked up about it when someone doesn't seem to like me, but not as much as I once did. These days, most things can be soothed away with little more than an hour of soothing music on a battery-operated radio while I work on some meaningless task at my leisure.

The most recent exercise in futility was working on a cast iron door handle that could be useful, but has never been used. It had been stored in my shed for a long time and had been coated with a thick layer of rust. As I worked to remove the scale (of rust in this case), a score from some composer whose name I can't pronounce, performed by the Slovakian National Orchestra played by a radio station broadcasting live from the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, S.C.

Now if that isn't enough to confuse even the most died-in-the-wool music lover, I don't know what is. Being a musical idiot, I could only understand the fact that the score was long, sounded like a glorified gypsy dance and hovered into some kind of melancholy repose before ending on a bright and cheerful note. By the time I was finished filing on the iron, my problems were forgotten like the little flakes of rust and metal on the floor about my feet.

An idle mind is the devil's workshop, or so I've heard, but there are seldom idle minds in my workshop. Even so, the busy mind is trouble in other ways. If I think too much, without finding something like music or iron door handles on which to focus, I usually end up getting myself into the middle of some kind of massive project that "really needs to be done right now."

A wise man once told me that he always tried to look busy enough so that everyone else felt bad about asking him to do anything else.

Any way, it's much safer for me to find my solace in symphonies and iron, rather than some cockamamie scheme to renovate the house or build the Great Wall of China, one-tenth scale, around the lower end of my house. But now that I think about it, a giant wall might be fun to build. See, there you go. Where's my radio?

After getting my belly full of National Public Radio, I returned to the house and felt more prepared to face the day. Since that day, I've been on a 10-day busy streak without a day of complete peace and solitude. Just having a day to do whatever I want to do seems a whole lot like a vacation to me. Maybe I'll take some time off soon to take a camping trip or do some other kind of more formal vacationing. After all, summer only comes around once a year.

It looks like another column is coming to a close. I tried to tell everyone earlier that nothing important was going to be printed here, so I hope everyone listened. If not, let me be the first to say, "I told you so."

The good thing about it is that you won't be subjected to another 1,150 or so words of this stuff at least until next week. Maybe I'll come up with some better ideas by then, but don't count on it. That's exactly what I had hoped might happen this week.
 

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