I used to drive past disheveled or distressed people just walking on down the sidewalk and think, "That cat has no place to go." If I might stay in the idiom of the Rat Pack, now I can dig it. Besides being judgmental, rude, small-minded and outright dickish, I understand now that I have all hours of the day with which to deal. It finally occurred to me that walking is doing. At a time in your life, when days are long and there's nothing happening and you're tired of TV, being on your phone or reading, walking gives you something to do. I had been pacing the hotel room because more unpleasant things were happening -- please refer to my Facebook page -- and needed to let loose some energy. So I went for a walk. Am I being dramatic? In the past I saw walking under two categories. The first was simple pragmatism. Usually walking is getting from Point A to Point B. Another use of walking is health. Get out and get your heart pumping and you can see these folks, usually clad in quasi-athletic gear, a baseball cap and ear buds. (Note from newspaper editor: Don't wear ear buds if you're crossing streets because you can't hear traffic or car horns -- I've seen too many stories of walkers or runners getting creamed and killed because they're more interested in listening to crappy music than life around them. I'm not dying for Rihanna, man.) But sometimes, you have to walk because it's something to do to fill the time. I walked two rotations around Miller-Showers Park today, right in front of my home at Motel 6. I learned about the ecology of the park, the history of Miller and Showers and breathed air more fresh than my hotel room. I also bore the stare of a Canada goose that was tending her goslings at the edge of one of the ponds. Had I averred from my straight line down the sidewalk, the goose was going to come at me like a member of the Sopranos family. The land is a gift from the Miller family and the Showers family, the latter of which once produced a majority of furniture in the country. But the land and the creek through it largely went unused until about the year 2000 when the retention ponds were used to filter runoff from development in the area tied to Indiana University's nearby sports facilities. Public art was added and it has become one of they many gems of the city. One of the downsides of being so busy as a daily news editor is I didn't get a chance to use joys of the city. Of one of the upsides of the extra times of being laid off: I can better understand the joys of the city. Many blessings, folks. Many blessings.