Old Habits

               I’ve been faced with a deadline for my column most every week since 1996.  I’ve taken a few weeks off here and there, but most of the time I had 400 or so words of something to submit to the string of people who held the job of editor at the Cambridge News. 

               In fact, I’d estimate that over 1,100 columns ran over those years.  That amounts to roughly 440,000 words – enough to make four novels.

               Now I’ve been invited to NOT submit any more columns, for whatever reason.  Recent changes in management and ownership surely factor into the decision, and while I’m a little sad, I recognize that these things happen.

               It’s funny how old habits die.  Hard.  That’s how they die.  On Monday I found myself bouncing some column ideas around in my head, only to realize that finding a topic wasn’t necessary.  Truth be told, over the last 10 years or more, most of the topics that were on my mind were too political to submit to the paper.  At least, that’s how I saw it.  My goal for my column was to be entertaining and thought provoking, touching on politics only when I thought what I had to say was not being said elsewhere.

               Ironically, the editorial page of the paper has become more political than before, but also, it seems, more politically correct.  I had a column turned down in February (first time in 23 years) for discussing words from a published lexicon for gender terminology.  I approached it in a light-hearted way.  That was offensive, or so I was told.  And, maybe it was.  I don’t know.

               For every one of the 23 years I’ve been writing my weekly column I’ve posed the following question to myself: Who the hell do I think I am?  Who am I that anyone would care what I have to say about any topic? 

               The answer really never came to me, other than the eventual realization that nobody has a monopoly on what’s true or interesting, and, basically, why the hell NOT me?  People can read what I have to say or not.  If they are amused or informed; great.  If not, so what?

               So, I’m going to keep writing most every week and post what I have to say on my blog, which is at www.peterwallace.wordpress.com.  A majority of those 1,100 previous columns are archived there as well.

               I’m going to keep writing because of my ego, I’m sure, but also because it is a big help for me to put thoughts into words in the process of figuring out how I think and feel about things.  Not doing that would be the hardest old habit to break.