Midlife in 1,000 Words or Less ...

Some men hit midlife and buy a Corvette. Others splurge on a super expensive second wife, half the age and double the cup size of the first. Me, I drove over to Borders books.

Sure, that sounds like an anticlimax. But with the economy being so lousy, book shopping seemed like the best way to battle massive anxiety yet stay within my budget.

The occasion? Only my 44th birthday, an over-hyped, underwhelming personal landmark full of smirky "wow, you're olds," wiseass Facebook comments, and a burning desire to avoid a colonscopy, the gift my family doctor has been trying to give me for a couple years now.

Fighting back middle age was how I ended up in the Women's Health aisle, leafing though Suzanne Somers' latest epic, "Breakthrough: 8 Steps to Wellness: Life-Altering Secrets from Today’s Cutting-Edge Doctors." Shockingly, I actually made it four pages, right up to here – "We are under the greatest environmental assault in the history of mankind; we live in a world of unbelievable stress and pollution. Our bodies are no longer able to tolerate this assault and as a result people are sick." That's when I realized three things:

One, I didn't need to spend $25.95 to depress the hell out of myself. I was already there. Two, I liked Suzanne Somers a lot better as Chrissy, the dingy blonde on Three's Company, or even on those Thighmaster infomercials. And three, I really need to write a self-help book.

Seems like everyone's an advice whiz these days. The comedian Steve Harvey has a self-help book. So does talk show host Montel Williams, and Playboy centerfold Jenny McCarthy. Oprah has her mug on a bunch, and LL Cool J has a workout book and on and on.

Me, all I have a title so far. I'm going to call mine, What Are You A Freakin' Moron: Simple Stuff That Will Screw Up Your Life If You Forget It!

Catchy, huh? The best part is, the title has a colon. That's something I learned from Suzanne Somers – all self-help bestsellers have a colon in the middle of the title. I'm not sure why that is, but it seems to be a rule.

As for content, here's a confession for you: I pretty much have nothing so far. But that didn't seem to stop Spencer Johnson, the guy who wrote Who Moved My Cheese? I read that thing in like a half hour 10 years ago, while waiting for a dentist's appointment, and all I remember about Hem and Haw and Sniff and Scurry is that I've never felt so good about a root canal, either before or since.

I think a big part of my problem – besides still being confused by the world around me pretty much 24/7, even after 44 years alive – is my inability to take a simple thought and explain it at great length. That appears to be another self-help staple, but my 15 years of journalism seems to have beaten the long-windedness out of me. For example, my first chapter was going to be about how to lose weight, a subject I know all too well, having lost at least 2,000 pounds in my lifetime (while unfortunately also gaining back approximately 2,250).

What have I written so far?

"Eat less. Exercise more."

You see my problem, I'm sure. I mean, I could fill out the chapter with some recipes, but let's be honest: No one really follows those anyway after, what, like the first three days on the diet? So what's the point?

Then there's the chapter about success at work. In a lot of books, that's like a whole book by itself, which makes sense given how tricky the workplace is in the 21st century. Me, I haven't been able to come up with a second paragraph. I'm stuck after just three sentences:

"Do a good job and be nice to people. Because if you do a bad job but you're nice to people, it won’t matter that you're nice, because people will get sick of you. And because if you do a good job but you're a jackass, it won't matter that you did a good job, because people will get sick of you."

Kind of a cause and effect thing. Anyway, I'm sure the publishers will tell me that I need some way to make it more complicated, or it'll never sell. Sort of like relationships.

That's my other chapter that I'm working on right now – my take on women and how we men can get along with them better. Here's what I have at press time.

"Nothing."

That's the set-up sentence. Then there's the explainer sentence which follows: "Look at the word 'Nothing' in the sentence above. Stare hard at the letter 'o,' at the space within its circle. That tiny area contains all the vast knowledge I have accumulated about women after more than 16,000 days on this planet. It also holds all the knowledge about women that has been passed down to me by generations of Leibowitz men and by all humans who have ever owned a Y-chromosome. Never forget this. Never think you know anything. Never think you will know anything. If you keep this lack of knowledge squarely in mind, you will still fail miserably with women, but at least you won't be overconfident."

I know. The chapter needs work; all the chapters need work. But, 44 years in, at least I feel like I'm finally making some progress.