I’m done.

Actually, it’s not me…it’s May sweeps, which officially ends at the end of the broadcast day.  It has just been a long sweeps period.  Lots of breaking news, including the retirement of Charleston’s fire chief, a scathing government report on the fire that led to that retirement, several days of severe storms mixed in for good measure, and those typical “sweeps stories” that no ratings period is truly complete without.

There have also been a few changes in some responsibilities for yours truly.  Most of them are quite welcome.  One particular change was not.

But the choice wasn’t mine, so I get the lecture about “Change happens, Patrick.  Sometimes we have to adjust.  We all have to do things we don’t want to do.”

And so it goes.

There are times — and this was one of them — when I am reminded that very often, in this infamous “grand scheme of things” we keep hearing about, I am more often merely a cog in the machinery than any kind of standout.  Most of the time, I don’t mind being such a cog, because I think I tend to be trusted as one of the more reliable cogs that happens to be spinning or twirling or doing whatever it is that cogs actually do.

Sometimes, however — and this is one of them — I wonder what it would be like to be more than just a stupid little cog.

And the first one of you to say, “The machine can’t run without those ‘stupid little cogs’” gets a sock in the head.