This week marks the one-year anniversary of my biweekly musings in this newspaper. Every other week, I write about 1,000 words, a manageable average of a single word every 20 minutes over 14 days.

I have asked you to come inside my head to explore terrain both banal and bizarre: family meals, death, the weather, sandwich sins, East coast versus West coast, patriotism, life milestones and dodging people in the Upper Valley, among other topics. One subject, whether or not people lock their cars and homes, continues to fascinate me.

Each time I submit a piece, I immediately begin to ask myself the following question: “What the heck am I going to write about next time?”

I use a word stronger than “heck.”

For the past year, that question has sprouted up in my mind nearly every day. It nags me as I cruise the aisles of Shaw’s in West Lebanon. Like a needy child, it tugs at the sleeve of my thoughts when I am playing hockey, driving back roads in Vershire, or eating lentil soup. When answers present themselves, they generally do so in an inconvenient manner. As a rule, I need to write down the idea almost immediately lest a new thought elbow it out of the way, onto the Pile of Forgotten Inspirations. So, when a light bulb goes on during a parent-teacher conference, while I am holding my breath as I help my son in an outhouse, or when I am poaching an egg, it can be challenging to find the time to jot the thought down so that I can find it later. Many worthy ideas have disappeared into the clouds simply because I didn’t have a pen when they danced into my head, on their way to somewhere or someone else.

One could get frustrated, but, for the most part, these are the types of annoyances that the next sunrise erases with ease. Plus, I have a place where I collect the various debris in my head in hopes that some garbage may end up being gold. Here’s a sample of current nonsense that may or may not come to life: a column written entirely in the passive voice (by me); the sexiest songs of all time (Foreigner’s Urgent should never make the list, no matter what the internet says); great words that begin with the letter B (feeling bamboozled?); a column that only uses animal idioms (I just let the cat out of the bag); the joy I feel when my oldest son says to me, “I’ll give you a thousand dollars for some of those pennies.”

The real purpose of writing, of course is, first, to use words in print to get people thinking, and then to get them talking. There are few places better suited for a good old-fashioned colloquy or a rowdy quarrel than the Upper Valley. People here are smart, independent, opinionated, sharp-witted and honest. A lot of my fellow Upper Valley residents have encouraged me to explore subjects that interest, vex, confound or amuse them. I love hearing these ideas, but I mostly stick to the chaos in my own brain because I worry I might have a diametrically opposite viewpoint on the subject others recommend to me, which could lead to some awkwardness.

Nevertheless, I use residents of the Upper Valley, and their words and actions, as a bottomless well of inspiration. Snippets of eavesdropped chatter have launched a column or two. Oftentimes, when I am searching for material, I simply watch people interact in the communities of this area. Even trivial interactions can become fat coins in my writing piggy bank because, by and large, people here never seem to run out ways to be courteous, funny and genuine. Some folks start every conversation with me by saying, “This is off the record.” We laugh about it, and I respect it.

One unexpected side effect of writing in this space is that some people take the time to contact me after reading. They send questions, criticisms, praise. More than once, I have memorized a response and allowed it to keep me up at night in a futile attempt to read between the lines of someone else’s words. As Yoda might say, “Fragile, the mind is.”

In my first year, I tried to keep things on the lighter, optimistic side. I did it mainly for me, but also for the communities of the Upper Valley; is there any such thing as a selfish public service? Like many of you, I need a break from the avalanche of harrowing news: that TV star/senator/senate candidate/comedian/actor sexually assaulted someone; that guy just said “Pocahontas” at an event honoring Navajo Code Talkers of World War II; that missile can apparently reach the East Coast of the United States; that Boston Bruins team appears to be middling, at best. If any of us wishes to find signs that THE END IS NEAR, opening our eyes and ears is usually sufficient.

I wonder if 2018 will make me change my tone. I have a lot of opinions about all that other stuff; events may force me to share them with you. In the meantime, I’ve got to start thinking about two weeks from now … what the heck am I going to write about? The clock is ticking.

Mark Lilienthal lives in Norwich. He can be reached at mlilient@gmail.com.