It’s my final column, so what have I learned? Erm . . .

This is my final Irish Times column. After 14 years I'm finishing up, to pursue other writing. Frankly, I tried to write a valedictory piece that would unify all my thoughts into one devastatingly articulate conclusion to reverberate through the ages – but I only got as far as, "This is my final Irish Times column." So, instead, here are six pieces of wisdom I've gleaned over the years. Or, if you prefer, yet another list to add to an internet full of them.

1: It has been a privilege
It has been especially so to be paid to write a column at a time when opinion is available on tap. Opinion shouts at us from the radio, babbles at us from the TV, goads us from the online-comment threads. The very word has developed a sanctity, wielded as a guillotine to arguments when reason runs dry. "Well, that's just your opinion." Or, "It's my opinion and I'm entitled to it." (How much easier each week would have been if I could have ended every column that way.)

To be given some sort of notional elevation by a national newspaper remains a privilege, bestowing a platform on which to wobble unsteadily while every week hoping that nobody will spot just how rickety the edifice is. Or, if they do spot it, that they won’t shake it too hard.

2: I'm a bad modern journalist
Many journalists hate the way that opening articles to online comments can allow for personal attacks instead of comments on the piece itself. I've a lot of sympathy for colleagues faced with hurtful, public attacks, and have written about the way that many media organisations are obsessed with building an audience through Facebook but ignore their responsibilities as soon as the comments degenerate.

Yet my own experience has been largely positive. It has helped that my columns have never really been big box office on irishtimes.com, so people usually came to hear their voice echo back at them. Still, I have to confess that I generally preferred not to get involved in the comment threads.

Oh, sure, journalists are encouraged to roll up their sleeves and get chatty with the readers, but I found it tricky for one particular reason: I could just about muster up an opinion on one thing each week, and even then I often ran out of words well before I was supposed to. Please don’t ask me to elucidate any further on the subject. Everything I have to say is already above the line. Didn’t you notice I had to pad it out with 200 words of clumsy metaphors?

3: Friendly feedback
I have always appreciated the readers who gave a few moments of their day to write and make a point, even in disagreement. This has most often come via the more direct and personal form of an email, where it usually involves a name, an address and a greeting.

On the rare occasions that I received a genuinely splenetic, insulting email I learned to respond with forced politeness. This would trigger an apology from the reader, who would come across as a little stunned to find they’d written to a live human being.

4: Bono = busy inbox
What topic has been guaranteed a big response? Bono. Although I ventured only rarely into that territory, it seemed that the name of the U2 frontman was a trigger word for many people, home and abroad, pro-Bono and anti-Bono. The biggest response to anything I have ever written came after I compared him to Bruce Springsteen. I had to set aside days to answer those responses.

5: Everyone's a critic
I made a conscious effort in recent years to write positively about something every now and again rather than just settling for the default mode of griping about the world. I always found that tougher than it should be.

Why are most opinion columns effectively complaints of varying articulacy? Because there’s much to complain about, sure, but also, I believe, because being critical comes more naturally, the sharpest words are within easiest reach, and if criticism is well delivered the reader relishes it.

I have no idea if that theory is borne out by facts, but it’s my opinion and I’m entitled to it.

6: Last lines are the hardest part to write
Hold on. I've just remembered the devastatingly articulate conclusion that will unify all my thoughts. Ah, too late. I've run out of words.

shegarty@irishtimes.com
@shanehegarty