I once posted a blog item about two fellows with whom I had a sort of professional relationship.

One is an ultraconservative firebrand; the other is an ultraliberal firebrand. I offered the notion that I must be doing something right to have angered both of them for essentially the same reason: I tilt too far the other way.

Here is what I wrote in July 2010.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2010/07/barbs-from-the-left-and-the-right/

I was working full time at the Amarillo Globe-News then, as editor of the Opinion pages. I would leave that job about two years later. I’m still blogging my brains out.

What I find refreshing about blogging in this context — as a retired former journalist — is that I no longer have to argue with critics who say I tilt too far in the opposite direction.

I tell people now — and I’ll reiterate it here — that I am now free to speak without apology. It’s not that I ever apologized for what I wrote when I was a working print editorialist. It’s just that I felt the need to correct whatever misinterpretation a critic would level at me.

“Your paper is too liberal,” they might say. “That rag of yours is too conservative,” others might say. No one can say that about this blog.

As the sayings go: “It is what it is,” and “What you see is what you get.”

As time marches on since my departure from daily print journalism I find myself separating myself more easily from the regular occurrences that would develop, such as the one noted in that July 2010 blog post.

I love telling friends with whom I cross paths that these days I am: unfettered, unchained, unrestrained, unleashed, uncaged, untethered, unrestricted … you can put the prefix “un” in front of any descriptive term you want.

That’s me. I’m having a blast, man.