I sat down Wednesday afternoon to write my weekly column and finished it in record time.

I have to say it was pretty good, too. It contained an interesting anecdote, plenty of humor, a bit of wisdom gleaned from an unexpected experience, and even wrapped up with a moral of the story.

After I finished my well-rounded column, I went home and ended up doing some thinking. Often this is dangerous territory for me, but this time I just couldn’t help myself.

After about an hour of deep thought I came to the conclusion that I would have to set aside my original column and head to work a bit early on Thursday in order to share my thoughts of the previous evening.

As is the case with most of my “deep-thinking,” I’m not entirely sure where the stream of consciousness began or the exact route it took to get me to the heart of it.

However, the ‘heart of it’ is exactly where it ended up, quite literally, and exactly where I’m speaking from.

Sometimes it takes an extreme event to realize the importance of family. Sometimes, it just kind of stumbles upon you. That’s what happened to me the other day as I thought about my brother and just how much I miss him.

Unfortunately, because we all make mistakes and I make more than my fair share, I haven’t been able to be as close to my brother as I would like.

It isn’t just the distance (he lives in New York City) and there isn’t much of an age difference (three years). What it really comes down to is we chose separate lives a long time ago and sometimes there isn’t much you can do to reconcile two very different personalities.

But what we both forget, all to often, is how much we have in common. We’re both smart, work well with people, love attention and we’re definitely stubborn as hell. Did I mention good-looking?