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I don’t need no stinking New Year’s resolutions. I got a TV that’s already high resolution.

A general policy of mine fits the changing of the annums. It has served me in all the years of writing, NASCAR and otherwise.

Just write what you see, man. Block out the past and the future. Open your eyes and ears. Write what comes in. Then it goes out, most of the time electronically, nowadays, and readers can think what they want. It’s a free country for writers and readers alike.

A sportswriter accepts that his words will not always be received with adulation. It’s the price of being true to himself (or herself, as not all sportswriters are I). It is also liberating and honest. Let others assign motives and prejudices as they most certainly will.

The NASCAR garage can be a fearsome place for writers flitting about like overweight hummingbirds, seeking their sweet stories. As is the case with other athletes, the trouble comes not from what they read – as a general rule, with notable exceptions, they don’t read much – but what someone else tells them someone wrote. Much gets lost and added in translation. Also, the headlines that most don’t actually write. A lot more of those guys (and gals) read headlines, and an alarming number stop right there.

My favorite defense mechanism was to stand there in some embarrassing confrontation, face to face, and let the angry driver, mechanic, owner or “representative” have the obligatory hissy fit, then simply ask, “You through?”

Then I’d say, “Well, in my defense, it was heartfelt.”

That usually stopped them in their tracks.

Most readers understand the difference between reporting and commentary. Reporting is about facts. Columns are about opinion. From this side of the screen, this seems obvious. Many people who rant about “opinions” are reading what someone is paying the writer to give. I understand it quite well. I’ve never had a job prestigious enough that I didn’t have to do both.

Folks who make a heap of money often seem to think it somehow makes them superior. In the eyes of God, I don’t think so, and the Bible backs me up.

I hear some athlete say he’d race for nothing, and the voice inside my head thinks that the people who say that have seldom actually done it.

Like Merle Haggard, I take a lot of pride in what I am.

Another complaint drivers make runs along the lines of, “What right have you got to write about how I drive? You’ve never driven a race car.”

It’s tough. I gotta try. It’s my job. As the late David Poole used to say, “I’ve never died, but I’ve written obituaries.”

Then again, David did die. As I will. And you will. There’s no getting around it. Just watch and listen, then sit down and write about it.