Clinton, South Carolina, Thursday, January 9, 2020, 10:59 a.m.

For some reason, I make big decisions quickly. I think it through, sleep on it, get up thoughtful, and decide what I want to do. What I agonize over is small decisions. Deciding what I’m in the mood for at dinner – I never heard it called anything but supper until I went to college – sometimes causes me to think about it so long that I just give up and have a couple turkey sandwiches or some crackers and dip.

If the last few weeks had been the chapter in a book, it would have been named “Decisions, Decisions.”

I’ve been making up my mind and deciding what it’s going to take. I’ve been moving in that direction by doing research online, talking with friends, meeting over lunch (dinner in my youth), and making initial arrangements. I haven’t doubted for an instant what I needed to do. I have only fretted about what needs to be done to make it work.

What is this great project? In due time, friends. In due time. The horse still needs to stay in the barn for a while.

Meanwhile, the demands of the status quo have heated up even if the weather hasn’t. Schools are back in session. Basketball games and wrestling matches are occurring regularly again, as are government meetings and releases landing in my email for editing and processing.

Tonight two events – one news, the other sports – are taking place at the same time. I’m hoping one will end in time to catch part of the other. I’m taking the camera in hopes of getting a chance to use it.

Basketball games – the next flurry is Friday – require long nights. I go to one game, take many photos and notes, take a picture of the scorebook with my cell – just another change in modern journalism – go home, crop, adjust, and select the photos, write a story about the games (usually girls’ and boys’), review the results of two others sets of games, write about them, check everything out one last time, and go to bed. That’s usually well after midnight.

I awaken uneasily. (I like the word “awaken” and decry its increasing replacement by “wake up.”) I am at my most thoughtful in the morning. I dread the first look at email or the checking of my phone for messages. Something often appears that sets off an uproar, whether it’s local and job-related or international and on TV.

Our president is tiring. He takes all the air out of a big room.

It seems as if the future is uncertain in both the micro and the macro, or perhaps it is just the way life is supposed to be. I’ve never been at this point of life before.

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