I did a little quick math last night and realized, to my surprise, that today’s column is my twenty-seventh with our hometown daily newspaper. In other words, it’s been six months since I first began writing it – way back in September – and all I can say is my, how the time truly does fly.

I’d like to think that, in the past half-a-year, I’ve managed to cover a fairly wide range of topics, which was my ultimate goal when our esteemed editor first offered me this opportunity. From politics to religion, modern technology to music, war, climate change, Facebook, hydrofracturing, my fear of dentists and yes, even alien invasions, I’ve done my best to offer up something a little different, week in and week out.

And while I’ve certainly enjoyed the positive feedback that’s come my way, I’ve also appreciated the occasional criticism – it keeps me on my toes.

Looking back, I distinctly remember my preliminary research on newspaper columns in general. For the first month or so, I even kept a list of “rules” on the wall overlooking my computer here in the office. I think there were three, if I’m not mistaken, and they went something like this: a column is a regular feature in the newspaper, it’s personality-driven and it focuses on the opinion of the writer.

Which I took to mean – it should be in the queue, by deadline, every week; I should try my best to be myself while writing it (as potentially dangerous as that sounded at the time), and I shouldn’t be afraid to state my honest opinion (also an alarming thought when you happen to be as opinionated as I am).

Regardless, I must say it’s been quite the experience over the past six months, even those times when my stress level (not to mention blood pressure) began to skyrocket.

What I find particularly funny is the gradual progression that’s occurred in the process of writing my weekly column. At the very beginning, I spent an entire weekend trying to come up with four or five individual columns, so that – no matter what – I’d have some handy back-ups in the occasion of a crazy-busy week or a case of dreaded Writer’s Block, which I like to call, “What am I going to do now? I can’t think of a damned thing to write.”

Needless to say, it didn’t work. In fact, that first Wednesday on Sept. 29 found me scrambling to wrap up my first-ever column on time.