One benefit of writing an opinion column is the connection you build with readers. I hear from all sorts of folks, but mostly they fall into two camps.</p><p>There are those who agree with my point of view and therefore consider me something of a genius. Great minds and all that.</p><p>And then there are those who consider me an ignorant boob because they see things differently. It&#x92;s a nice balance. The slams, especially, keep you humble.</p><p>One of my favorites came some years ago from a Blue Springs man who took issue with observations I&#x92;d made about a radio talker. Me complaining about so and so, the letter writer said, &#x93;is kind of like a skunk complaining that a dead possum stinks.&#x94;</p><p>It made me laugh, so I framed it and for years it&#x92;s shared the same wall with a missive from yet another critic.</p><p>Instead of writing a letter, though, this guy went to the trouble of clipping out that day&#x92;s column and sending it to me.</p><p>It&#x92;s not like I needed another copy, but on it he&#x92;d scrawled a message with a black Sharpie:</p><p>&#x93;More liberal hogwash and sour grapes &#x97; live with it, loudmouth.&#x94;</p><p>We all have opinions. For the past 14&frac12; years, I&#x92;ve given you my take on the news of the day. Hard telling the exact number of columns I&#x92;ve written. Somewhere between 1,900 and 2,000.</p><p>If you think that&#x92;s an awful lot of opinions for any one person to dish out, I&#x92;d agree with you. That&#x92;s especially so when you figure that each column contained one if not several nuggets from my gold mine of sparkling insight.</p><p>It&#x92;s way more opinions than I imagined I had in me at the start. Having spent the prior 19 years as a straight-news reporter, I was curious what the transition had been like for other reporters-turned-columnists.</p><p>So I asked Art Brisbane out to lunch. He was executive editor at the time, but in an earlier life he&#x92;d done two stints as a metro columnist.</p><p>Surely Art would have some helpful observations, and one of them stuck with me.</p><p>&#x93;There&#x92;ll be days,&#x94; Art said, &#x93;when you&#x92;ll open the newspaper to your own column and say to yourself, &#x91;Why can&#x92;t that blowhard just shut the hell up?&#x92;&#8194;&#x94;</p><p>Yes, there have been days like that. Maybe not as many as some of you&#x92;ve had, but enough to know that the time would come when I&#x92;d welcome a change.</p><p>That&#x92;s one reason I&#x92;m eager to return to my roots. Another is I can write more in depth than this column format allows, so from now on look for my byline as a full-time reporter for The Star, covering local government on both sides of the state line.</p><p>Reporters aren&#x92;t supposed to insert opinions into news stories, and neither will I. When I feel like sharing my views, I&#x92;ll dole them out to my family, friends or the dog &#x97; if he&#x92;ll tolerate it.</p><p>I&#x92;ll still be covering the stories that matter to Kansas Citians. Let&#x92;s keep in touch.