My Intentions

A year-and-a-half ago I was met with an opportunity too good to pass up. It came about while working with the owner/publisher of The Manhattan Mercury on combining the operations of the paper with his family-owned radio stations.

It went sort of like this: “Hey Matson, given your background and experience, why don’t you design and host a radio talk show that we can sell?”

There was some altruism baked in. One topic per hour, one, maybe two guests per topic, use it as a vehicle to elevate the public dialogue about stuff that matters.

He didn’t have to ask me twice. It was a rare alignment of stars that would allow a soft landing to a career in the very industry where it began. Fifteen to 20 hours a week, I thought. Step away from full time day job work. Semi-retirement.

Not so much.

It turned out managing and researching five separate guests and five separate topics five days each week pushed me well beyond the 15-20. Often the hard way, I have come to learn there is a straight line that connects boundary-setting with peace of mind. Ergo, beginning this coming week, the show will transition to three days a week, airing Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Johnny Carson springs to mind. At the end of his career, he was stepping out from behind the multi-colored Tonight Show curtain only three days a week.

Be like Johnny.

I have watched carefully as older friends have trod this path. Some struggled, some lamented a legacy that seemed to elude them, others grew bored and restless, some moved to Arizona or Florida. One drank himself to death.

In no particular order, here are my intentions.

I’ll sit on the deck at sunrise with a cup of coffee and contemplate the ducks, geese, Apache helicopters from the 1^st Combat Aviation Brigade and their place in the universe. Then I’ll contemplate the universe. No way we’re the only planet with intelligent life.

I will don the noise-cancelling headphones, crank Boston’s ‘More Than a Feeling’ to full volume and walk a few laps around City Park. “And dream of a girl I used to know. I closed my eyes and she slipped away.”

I will put away the laundry currently taking up space on the treadmill in the basement and use it for its intended purpose.

Rather than shopping for one size up, I will lose twenty pounds and get back into 80 percent of the clothes hanging in my closet, fully aware, yet blissfully apathetic of the fact that they’re a couple of decades out of fashion.

Cuffs on my dress slacks be damned.

I will perfect my golf swing. Having not played regularly since the fall of 1998, it’s a tad rusty.

Victor Ordway will come to mind. My maternal grandfather was an outgoing, entrepreneurial spirit who once told me, “It’s the same God in every church. The rest is just window dressing.” 

I’ll remember the responsibility and opportunity that awaits me with my two grandsons, little boys who will come of age in a vastly different world.

After a career of getting waylaid by other people’s priorities, I will implement polite, non-threatening methods of communicating, “no.”

I will return to the deck at sunset with a lemonade and think about those who influenced me – good and bad, and the gratitude for having lived long enough to accept the difference. 

I will get serious about starting the process that will lead to writing a third book. Two ideas are marinating. Then I’ll start the process, then I’ll implement the process, then I’ll finish the process, then I’ll write the book.

There’s a chronology to these things.

I will sleep late and go to bed early.

And on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings, I will sit behind a microphone at 9 a.m. in the broadcast studios of a family-owned media company in Manhattan, Kansas and do my little part to improve the lives of those around me.

Mike Matson’s column appears every other weekend in The Mercury, and he hosts ‘Within Reason,’ Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 9 a.m. on NewsRadio KMAN.