I’m still trying to shake myself loose from my previous life as a working stiff, but a brief encounter today illustrated how difficult that task remains.
I walked into the polling place this morning to vote in the Amarillo municipal and Amarillo College election. I presented the voting judge my voting registration card and my driver’s license (with photo ID that’s now required).
He looked it over, signed me and said, “Oh, you’re with the newspaper.”
“Um, no. I used to be,” I answered. “I left the Globe-News nearly five years ago,” I explained. “I guess you haven’t missed me,” I joked. He chuckled and said, rather sheepishly, “I don’t read the paper.”
“Well,” I said, “neither do I.”
This is the kind of greeting I get from time to time as I conduct daily business here. My job asĀ Opinion page editor of the Globe-News more or less defined me in the eyes of many folks who read the paper andĀ saw my name on the Opinion page masthead.
That’s all great. At some level I do appreciate the recognition that comes my way. Everyone who brings up my recent past is gracious, kind, some are complimentary; others say something like, “Oh, I often disagreed with you, but I always read your stuff.”
My wife and I are still in the midst of this transition from full-time work to full-time retirement. The transition is progressing along many fronts. The most critical of them is our on-going effort to prepare to commence to get ready to relocate.
When that task is completed, hopefully sooner rather than later, we’ll be resettled in a new community where no one knows us from the past we have left behind. We’ll greet everyone for the first time and no one — except for family members who will live nearby — will know what either of us used to do for a living.
I look forward to completing that journey.