Life sure can throw you the proverbial curve ball from time to time. You wake up on a typical Monday morning, no different than any other and ... Wham ... life as you know it (or have known it, I suppose) gets turned upside down, rolled about and the next thing you know ... well, I'm not going into details here, that's someone else's tale; suffice it to say, this roller coaster, just rolling along, screeched to a sudden halt before corkscrewing unpredictably, leaving this mild-mannered reporter feeling just a tad ... unbalanced? Probably not the best term to describe the events of the past couple of weeks, yet I'm at a loss for words, so to speak.

A terrible state of mind for any writer, don’t you think?

Life is like that, if you hadn't noticed; just when you think you have it’s craziness perfectly under control it up and decides it is - instead - going to go positively berserk, typically in a most unexpected way.

I find it unbelievable that I've never noticed this trend - or maybe I have and simply ignored it - but I guess age, as they say, brings wisdom.

Or at least a pleasant (one hopes) surprise, from time to time.

Hindsight, it seems, really is ... inconvenient ... sometimes, particularly when you're a reporter with a daily deadline or three to juggle. And as much as I try not to dwell on the past these days, it's impossible to take an accurate measure of my life now - and my future - without taking into account all the decisions, both good and bad, that got me here. And there was a time, not that long ago, that I was, if not content, acclimated to life working with my dad; a couple of beers with the old man at the end of the day, a game of pool and a guitar and I was happy. My life is a bit more complicated now, in many ways, and my ultimate goals have changed immensely.

There's that age and wisdom stuff again, but I didn't really mean that ... I'm only 36 ... I'm sure there's still plenty of time to make some stupid decisions left to me.