On February 9, 2004, I wrote a column about the 40th anniversary of the Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Since then, I have written 99 other columns about such things as my addiction to DVDs, Gay and Lesbian marriages, seeing The Passion of the Christ – and my trip to Florida to see my South Park family. In fact, the first seven columns after the one about the Beatles were about traveling to Florida to see people that I love very much – and about the wonderful time that I was having.

And now, as I complete yet another collection of 100 columns, I am once again on vacation seeing the same wonderful people and having the same wonderful time – and I couldn’t think of a better way to bring another series of columns to a close.

Each time I reach another 100 columns, I can’t help but wax nostalgic and think of what happened in my life from the first of the series to the 100th. During the last batch of columns, I went to Florida, left my job at the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, traveled to Chicago to see Dan, Kandice and even more members of my South Park family, got a job as Marketing Director of Fillmore Real Estate, became the Publisher of The Pulse – and came here to Ohio to see my South Park family once again – putting almost every moment of the last 226 days on paper.

Of the many accomplishments that I have been lucky enough to achieve, I think my biggest one is that I have recorded a written history of my life since 1997. For the last seven years, I have been able to document nearly every major event in my life. I find it amazing that I am able to go “back in time” in my life through my columns and relive pieces of my past. Good or bad, personal or political, inspirational or educational – or funny or tear jerking – each and every one of the 726 columns I have written serve as published reminders of experiences I have had, views I wished to express, people whom I either loved or hated – and tragedies I was forced to endure. But no matter the subject of the column, each one will always be a piece of my past that I can relive simply by opening up a page from one of the eight books that I have written.

Besides thanking God for the ability to write and for the fact that I maintained such an accurate and comprehensive record of the last seven years of my life – I am grateful for each and every moment, event, incident and person that inspired me enough to write a column about them. There are many topics that I wanted to write about, but never got around to because of various reasons. But when I do write a column – I mean every single word that I type into the computer. Considering that this column is about my life and life experiences, I swore to keep it truthful and accurate – and have proudly kept that promise since February of 1997 – and will for the rest of my life.

I plan on documenting the rest of my life while I live it to the fullest, and I look forward to whatever lies ahead for me. Granted there will be happy times – and there will be sad times. There will be moments I will treasure – and moments I will want to forget. There will be experiences that I live through every day – and some that will come once in a lifetime. But no matter the path of my future, I will look forward to it, live it as best I can…

…and write it down.