Alphabet Street

One thing I've noticed on my drive to Stillwater every morning is that there are an awful lot of people out there, and they all seem to be going the opposite direction that I am. This probably is not a good sign- do they know something I don't?

My best friend gave me some career advice a job change ago that has helped me deal with some of the stress of my newest job. She told me, "You have to fake it 'til you make it." Her point was that if I showed the people around me that I was confident I knew what I was doing, eventually their confidence in me would increase and I would be on my way. This is an invaluable lesson to hold on to when working in the area of politics. Successful politicians learned long ago that it isn't so much what you are saying, it is how you say it.

All this comes to mind because it is becoming more and more a daunting challenge to write this column every week. I had a business lunch with a colleague this week who asked me if it was tough to share my writing with others, that for her that would be a frightening experience. I tried to explain that at this point, sharing is really not a problem because the feelings expressed in my writing these days are more or less just a tiny portion of my personality.

Although I have reached a stage in my life where more and more people are coming to me for my opinion or advice, as it is surely clear to most of you by now, I don't know nothing that none of you already don't know. It has been my routine over the past five years to save this page until the very end of the newsletter's production, and by then the relief that another week's issue is nearly done often knocks down the defenses long enough for me to be able to fill up one last page. I try to think of a topic throughout the preceding week, but often it comes down to whatever is on my mind at the moment.

I feel lucky when I can string together a bunch of words that make some type of coherent sense. In other words, it doesn't matter so much what those words convey, it's that they are able to convey anything at all. The goal of the newsletter after all has always been to provide information to you all in an entertaining way. Thus if we can somehow manage to walk the fine line between providing useful information to you in a way that makes you read it with a smile, we have done our job. Just like one long infomercial.

This wasn't always the case of course. Back in the days when I was falling in love with the craft of writing, when the dreams were to become the next big thing in journalism, every single word, every single article was meticulously thought out. If a word didn't immediately flow out of my mind, I would thumb through the dictionary or thesaurus hoping to discover the right sound to convey what I wanted to impress my readers with. But just like most things in life, as one grows older, one doesn't have the time for such passionate idealism. Get it down on paper and hope that the type sticks to the paper is about all one can ask for. This is not to say that the words don't mean anything anymore. An occasional odd combination will appear that amazes me that it was somewhere inside of me and found its way into the cold print that appears before your eyes to digest. I may have stopped searching for the truth and the desire to become the next F. Scott Fitzgerald, but writing something worthwhile is still the most satisfying experience I can think of. There are a limited amount of words out there and a limited number of combinations you can use those words. The successful communicators are not the ones who use words to make sense, they are the ones who make the words sound good together. So the story this week is: Anita believes canaries develop enlarged feathers going high inside jagged, knotted, local meadows. Nomadic ornery people quit regarding simple theories unless verified with x-rayed, young zeal.