I knew going in that my initial draft for this column was going to be a tough sell. I had already hoed this row more than once in the last year and had rewritten the thing four or five times after my wife read through a draft and commented that I “went a little hard in the paint.” So, I took some time softening it where it was too strident and taking a weed whacker to the overwrought word count.

Believe it or not, I wasn’t even a little upset when I got the word it wouldn’t be running, and I needed to take another stab at a blank page. Not even an ounce of me was indignant if you can believe it; no small voice in my head crying foul at such “censorship.” The reality was that I had developed my own reservations after taking in the local debate at recent city council meetings.

It’s not that I don’t agree with what I had written, but like my bosses I too saw there wasn’t much left to squeeze from that lemon that would help the medicine go down. Because after all, who wants to read or consume content that only upsets or amounts to nothing more than, “my goodness! Isn’t this pot stirred?!”

I was hired at The Minot Daily News shortly before that massive blizzard in April 2022, which cut short my final week of shifts at Dot’s Pretzels in Velva. While I was snowed in, I reached out to the resident pot stirrer from my hometown for some advice on life as a newspaperman.

Kevin Carvell is one of the characters responsible for sowing the seeds for the infamous “Zip to Zap” back when he was the editor the NDSU student newspaper “The Spectrum” before moving on to a career in journalism and politics. He commented that while his time at the Fargo Forum was certainly rewarding, it wasn’t the vocation that afforded him his retirement as a local historian and rescuer of feral felines. With that pragmatic advice in my head, I showed up to the office and jumped off the dock anyway embracing the fact that the job was all the reward I needed.

Since I was first asked to write a column, it has had a positive effect on me personally by providing an outlet for exploring and expressing myself in a more productive and healthy way. Based on some comments I’ve received, it’s possible it may not be helping all that much.

Since becoming trapped in the social media Skinner box after purchasing my first smartphone, my contributions to discourse had largely involved screeching into the digital void. Where I previously produced a stream of screeds indiscriminately blasted onto my social media accounts, I now had an excuse to put more effort into the process and subject another human being into editing it for public consumption. Instead of inflicting my wife and Facebook feed with daily rants, it can be redirected upon you good people instead. My apologies to my editors, but they signed up for this.

I tend to focus too much on national concerns with this column, in part due to the fact that I’m still woefully ignorant of the larger context of who is who and what is what in the Minot community. I’m too much of a homebody to rack up much social interaction, and if anyone I’ve given my card to has ever read this column, they likely assume I’m just a deranged crank who somehow bamboozled the good people at The Minot Daily News into hiring me. That may or may not be true, but I’ll leave you to speculate on that one.

I don’t typically use this column for vulnerability and self-reflection, but with many of the topics of my interest continuing to blaze forward with new infuriating and revelatory developments, I’m bound to be back to my old tricks come next week. But in the meantime, when I have unglued my devices from my hand, breathed some fresh air and touched some grass, thus far this June has been a splendid start to the summer.

My partner Angie and I threw an impulsive wedding and were very grateful for the flexible crowd that attended the ceremony at the Carnegie Center on June 3. We were quickly informed that the festivities were actually just another birthday party for my stepdaughter, November. She overdosed on Italian soda and cake before long and we had the place cleaned up and put away two hours early. It was a low-key affair. We had a taco bar.

With daily trips with the toddler to the parks and splash pads, enrolling her in gymnastics and spending way too much time letting her run amok at the mall and the Midsummer festival, my wife and I have been working hard to make sure this kid is having her own fabled “best summer ever.” Somehow, I keep getting shaken down by her for popsicles. Who am I to say no? It is summer after all.

All of it may wind up just a faded memory in the back of her mind, living on as dusty jpeg’s in the cloud, but it sure beats diving headfirst into the mire just for the sake of it.