Writing is my favorite part of the show. I mean I love meeting the fun people we focus our stories on, but writing in my first love. Though now that I’m married I think that sounds potentially offensive. Let’s just think of “first love” as something totally different from the “my endless love” Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross shamefully beat into our brains.

“First love” is a figure of speech. It identifies something that is inherently part of you. Come hell or high water, you always have that “first love.” I have several: Writing, the NFL and my lawn. Any one of those three can put me in a Zen-like state that is unshakable.

Yes, mom, I also have God. I know, I know. Don’t worry. I’m still very, very close to the straight and narrow. I can see the path from the weed patch I’m stumbling through (dangling participle intended). Which, of course, is NOT a description of my lawn. Let’s make that clear. My lawn is weed-less… ask my neighbors. My path is not… ask my wife, son, brothers, sisters, best friends and any of several psychologists who have had the great pleasure of peering into my meatball sized brain.

Okay, where was I? First love! Yes. I love writing the show. I get lost in time when I write. Even if I’m writing crap, I enjoy myself. And I have written a load or two over the years.

Just curious… have you found the thing (for you) that makes time irrelevant?

I’ve had a couple careers in my life. None of them felt the way writing does. I quit my previous job and went back to school at 32 years old! Just so I could write. I’m 45 now. Can you imagine a 32 year old me in college. I was older than some of my teachers. In fact, I partied with my teachers more than the other students. That’s probably not true, but it makes me sound intellectual. Or maybe it just makes my professors sound sad. Not sure. You choose.

To this day I’m close with two professors from Ohio University. We still get together from time to time. In school I used to make dinner for the then Ohio University President Bob Glidden and his wonderful wife Rene. (You’re wonderful too Bob. Just that Rene is more so.) They’d come over with a bottle of wine and I’d make pasta. We’d sit on the floor of my two-room grotto and eat and drink and talk about life. I think they were just happy to have a student who could talk without burping up beer.

It was an extraordinary time. When you make a big career move later in life, the free fall is more frightening… and exhilarating.

A man changing jobs in his 20s is like changing underwear. Happens at least a couple times a month. But in your mid-thirties, it’s like, like… buying ALL NEW underwear. And a different brand.

For those of us who weren’t born with that instinctive desire to do that one thing, that thing which thrills and fulfills you, we end up stumbling through a few careers before seeing the light.

And when you finally figure out what triggers you, you do what it takes to make that thing a regular part of your life. Even if I’m an average writer, and end up chased from television and have to turn to writing obituaries for a small town newspaper, I’ll be content. I’ll be writing.

I’ll also have my lawn and the NFL.

And if I play my cards right, I’ll also have what Lionel and Diana so sickeningly droned on and on about.

So let’s recap! New show June 8 at 8. I love writing, football and lawn care. I also love, but in a different way, a woman. And Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross should have stopped making music in 1980.

Okay, gotta get back to writing the show.

Mike Redding