After retiring as a teacher, I came to this paper 25 years ago this month, thinking I finally had a job where I could go in at 11 a.m. instead of dawn, proofread pages for a couple of hours two days a week, and go home to watch TV all afternoon. It didn’t work out that way.
The first thing that happened was that I began editing the stories, which meant I had to look for more than a missing comma. Then the boss decided to change my start time to 8 a.m., which was way too much like being back in the classroom, but I did it.
And then I came in complaining one day about a remodeling project we had launched into at home, and the boss said, “Write a column about it.” So I did, thinking it would be a one-off. Surely I could write one column. Then the composer informed me that if she made a column space for me that week, I would need to keep filling it.
All pumped up about what an important member of the staff I was about to become with my own column, which I dubbed “Life Lines,” I assured her that I could do that. I didn’t know then that my “important column” could be bumped at any time by a lucrative ad for laxatives or dog wormer that might come in late.
But despite the weeks my fascinating article was pulled for a laxative promotion, I’ve still managed to write 1000 “Life Lines” columns for this paper in the 25 years I’ve been working here.
Wow! Without realizing it, I’ve written more columns than Brett Farve threw touchdowns, which was a mere 508. Of course, he got tackled after a lot of those, and I have yet to be taken to the ground over what I’ve said, though that’s because I’m a fast runner.
I’ve written more columns than Dr. Now’s patients on My 600 Pound Life have lost pounds on TV. I’ve certainly written more columns than I’ve lost pounds. Writing must not use up many calories.
I’ve written more columns than the number of days some people stay married! I think about 450 days is the length of most celebrity unions, and one of those Kardashian women who spent a gazillion dollars on her wedding only stayed married for about 10 days. I don’t think the left-over wedding cake had even hardened in the freezer when she called in the divorce lawyers. I guess being married was not as much fun as getting married. At least my staying power tops hers!
The average number of words in my columns is 850. That means that in 25 years I’ve written about 850,000 words, which is getting close to 1 million words, I think, though I didn’t major in math. I could have written the novels War and Peace and Atlas Shrugged with that number of words and made a pile of money, but Tolstoy and Rand beat me to it.
I could have written a whole encyclopedia with that many words, maybe even two volumes, but nobody reads those now that we have Wikipedia. So I guess I’m better off to have stuck with a column that my husband and at least two other people do read every week— if the dog wormer ad doesn’t come in.
I’ve also spent a great part of the last 25 years working on “Life Lines,” which may be why I don’t remember doing much else since the year 2000. It takes about 2 1/2 hours to write a new column, from scribbling to a finished draft. It takes about one hour to refresh a Vintage column when I decide to re-run something I wrote several years ago. So let’s see, that’s ... uh ... well, no wonder I don’t have time to clean toilets at home. No wonder I’ve only given my dogs one bath each in the last 10 years (and they still haven’t forgiven me for that time).
I may not get much else done, but I’ve learned some good lessons about life by writing these 1000 columns.
First, I’ve learned that you don’t have to be famous or important to turn your life experiences into something people will read; you just have to be honest and willing to embarrass yourself in print. Readers like to know that someone does dumber things than they do.
Okay, so no one has told me that he, too, has fallen off a deck backwards in a chair or gotten pigeon poop on his head in Sante Fe. But writing about my life has helped me see that I’m not too different from other people.
People also tell me that I think just like they do. Which is frightening.
I’ve also learned that I can do anything if I just start it. Like that question — how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. If you had told me 25 years ago that I had to write 1000 columns I would have run away screaming and started cleaning toilets for a living. But I started that first column, and here I am.
So I’ve learned that if I want to solve any problem, I just have to take that first step, then keep stepping — or biting off pieces of the elephant, to follow that metaphor. Once I’ve started a job, I know I’ve only got 999 more bites to go!
So next week, come back for bite #1001. This column thing is still a pretty big elephant.
