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As I sit here, once again, trying to come up with something to write which might be remotely interesting to whomever may read it, I find myself pondering possible reasons for the increasing difficulty of this task. It seems that it's easier to write negatively than positively.

It's easy to complain and criticize; it's much harder to make the everyday into an interesting story. The weather here is absolutely wonderful, school is going well, the band is progressing nicely and I am in good health. Things could always be better, but one must also keep in mind that things could always be worse, as well. Personally, I'd rather see the glass as half full.

Even good things can be good stories if there is something new and out of the ordinary, a notable change; in short, some kind of excitement. While I may be happy with the status quo, for now, contentedness doesn't make for a very interesting story. It's Labor Day Weekend, and all is well.

Another factor, certainly, is time. I have become more active these past few months and thus have less time for cogitation. When I was working (and complaining about it), I had a lot of solitary time to think; stapling reports and feeding tape drives kept me busy physically while leaving my mind pretty much idle. Now I'm keeping my mind occupied with more immediate concerns, rather than mulling over what I'm going to write when I get home.

Of course, if I wanted to, I could find something to gripe about but I choose not to go looking for trouble -- it will find me again soon enough on its own. I would rather accentuate the positive as I believe I did last week. But I don't want to sound like a broken record, either.

The ironic thing about this column, if you haven't figured it out yet, is that I seem to be complaining about not complaining. This is not one of my best columns but, on the up-side, though, I *have*, after all, written *something* -- even if I haven't really said anything at all.

At least I know what the topic for this space will be next week. Butch and I have tickets for a concert at a bar named Bases Loaded next Saturday. Jackyl is playing and my column next week will be a review of that show. Hopefully it will be a good show; I'm confident that it will be great -- but I can't lose, because a bad show is still good column fodder.