Deadlines

Although I no longer have to hit deadlines I still write against them. I try to post a blog each night before midnight but I rarely start writing before 10 or 1030 p.m.. Sometimes later.

And then I play a game of Spider Solitaire first and check for new emails. Then I look at the clock and I better think of something I want to say.

So tonight it's deadlines. I spent my career as a journalist meeting deadlines. First at a newspaper. Then at a wire service, where it was “Deadline Every Minute,” as was the title of a book by a former UPI executive. How true that was.

There was an apocryphal joke in the wire service where a beleaguered writer was being pressured to get a story on the wire. The writer messaged: “I'm working on it. I've only got two hands.” The boss is said to have replied: “Fire the crippled bastard!” We all got the point.

Subsequently, in radio and then in TV news the clock was the deadline. Now, in retirement, there are to-do lists but those items can always be put off a day or so. And if you never get to them, you don't get to them.

And no one knows the difference. (Except my wife, of course.)

Signing off at 11:50 p.m. (That was close.)