I was cranked to a fifth gear, and everything I did, I did on a deadline.

Had it not been for "Nightline," Morrie would have died without ever seeing me again. I had no good excuse for this, except the one that everyone these days seems to have.
I had become too wrapped up in the siren song of my life. I was busy.

Although the TV and radio work were nice supplements, the newspaper had been my lifeline, my oxygen; when I saw my stories in print each morning, I knew that, in at least one way, I was alive.
I had grown used to thinking readers somehow needed my column. I was stunned at how easily things went on without me.

I wrote articles about rich athletes who, for the most part, could not care less about people like me.
.. My days were full, yet I remained, much of the time, unsatisfied.
What happened to me?

I had also developed my own culture. Work.
Over the years, I had taken labor as my companion and had moved everything else to the side.

.. I thought about him now and then, the things he had taught me about 'being human' and 'relating to others;, but it was always in the distance, as if from another life.. .. The people who might have told me were long forgotten, their phone numbers buried in some packed-away box in the attic.