When deep baby-sleep halts to sneering replication tickers - every bureaucratic bicker - all the rubbish tasks I'm going to have to clean up in days to come, I begin tossing and turning around the bed whose sudden crash in comfort level is leading my red eyes toward nausea.
This is when the adrenal stress pool is joined by the task of writing a newspaper column. What a painful mantra of canned narrative to be rehearsing at 4 a.m.
I've written columns before, but they were only for practice as a staff writer.
My words would never run, so there was never a fret.
Recently, my job description at The Spectrum has changed for the - eh, we'll wait and see, because with a very business-like emphasis on the 'will,' as an assistant editor, this column will run.
Plaguing me is the fact that I only get one shot at this very first column - one chance to do it right.
I don't want to look back on this inaugural argument and find some ordinary rant about this or that. If I had, I would have centralized the flow long ago.
By now, I would have been knee-deep in opiate chatter, comparing The Velvet Underground with Nine Inch Nails, spreading the good news that summer sing-alongs "Umbrella" and "Beautiful Girls" define our generation of darkness.
But this isn't the time and place for that hum.
This column has to be manly - a nice Scottish Army ass-up in the column's face. Because who knows how long I may be doing this column twaddle?
What if when I'm 95 years old, more than anxious to take an interminable nap, I'm etched in history as one of the great journalists of the 2020's?
I could go on to win a Pulitzer Prize. Even have my picture in the Times, smiling in a wheel chair with a bag on my hip.
And when that's the case, they are going to dig through the media mulch to uncover this very text to examine it, like a fossil.
This is, by no means, an expectation of mine, but I'm not taking any chances. I'm not running the risk of myself or future generations finding routine.
The current administration and the War on Terror? I'd love to give my two cents on these ready-made vehicles for debate. But political clatter just isn't worthy of this column. I'm not ready for that sort of spiraling commentary. Better yet, you're not ready.
Because when the time comes to load the opinionated trenches, my bombs will fall like rain and there won't be such things as prisoners.
Sorry Hillary, Barack, and Rudolph. You studs can wait.
The same goes for the geniuses over at ESPN who turned Monday Night Football into a late night talk show, catfight of a spectacle. The people who let little Tony Kornheiser out of his muskrat cage to sprinkle unwanted Pardon the Interruption pellets on the Monday night party are in the clear for now.
And do not worry, flashy NFL champions. I won't ask you to put on rugby scrum caps and try doing your Sunday celebration donkey dances just yet.
Aside from the rants, I'm also choosing to leave this space devoid of any heart-warming narrations about how a bowl of beef barley soup or a song from Bob Marley and the Wailers can teleport your soul back to one specific location and time.
I won't even describe the awesome feeling of power you can achieve from obtaining a simple black eye and a couple blisters on your heels the size of silver-dollar pancakes.
Instead, I'll use the little allotted print area I have left to dedicate a simple message of gratitude and affection to my mother and father. They visited me up here last weekend and they ought to know how much I love them.
Also to my brother Rich, who will hopefully be visiting me this upcoming weekend, I love you too, bro.
And there you have it. The very first published column from a soon-to-be-scrutinized writer, who's not quite ready to break the ice of the conventional column, comes to a close.
I only hope if you're reading this and the year is 2075, these inelegant words have met some sort of expectation.
