This is another in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement.
Everything happens for a reason. Is that too cliché to repeat here? Probably, but I just did it anyway.
An anniversary is fast approaching that reminds me of how life can throw you curve balls. You just have to be patient, keep the faith, rely on the love of others — and by golly, things can have this way of working out.
Later this week marks the fourth year since my full-time journalism career came to a sudden end. I wasn’t quite ready for it to conclude in that manner. It did, though.
I won’t belabor you again with the particulars, except to say that at the moment I learned that the job I’d been doing at the Amarillo Globe-News for nearly 18 years would be handed over to someone else was like being punched in the gut — and the face — at the same time.
I collected myself, went home, decided in the car on the way to the house that I would quit, came back the next day, cleared out my office, had an awkward conversation with my soon-to-be former employer and then left.
My wife and I departed Amarillo that very day for an eight-day vacation back east. We had a wonderful time seeing friends in Charlotte, N.C., and in Roanoke, Va.
We came home and started thinking about what we would do next.
I was too old — 63 years of age at the time — to seriously consider going back to work full time. I knew I couldn’t get hired because of my age.
Oh, sure, employers said they didn’t consider that. I know better. Ageism exists, man.
I decided to start the transition into retirement.
I’ve been working a number of part-time jobs in the four years since my departure from the craft that in many ways had defined me over the span of nearly 37 years. I was able to keep my hand in the profession I love so much: writing news features for KFDA News Channel 10, blogs (until recently) for Panhandle PBS and helping produce the Quay County Sun weekly newspaper in Tucumcari, N.M.
Along the way I made a startling discovery.
It was that while I didn’t want my career to end when it did and in the manner that it did — I am now happy that it did end.
We’re continuing that transition into full-time retirement. We plan to travel more. We plan to be our own bosses. We intend to see this continent of ours up close. All of those plans are proceeding.
We’ll have some more major changes in our life coming up. I won’t divulge them here. Our family and closest friends know what they are … so I’ll leave it at that.
My wife has told me I seem less stressed out these days. Hmmm. Imagine that.
The Associated Press and United Press International style books always instructed us to “avoid clichés like the plague.”
Thus, the cliché about things happening for a reason seems so trite.
Except that in this case, it’s flat-out true.
