Full-time work wears me out

This is another in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on impending retirement.

Epiphanies arrive at the strangest times.

Such as when one is in the middle of a part-time job and the realization hits: I no longer have the energy to work full time.

That one hit me at some point this afternoon. Thus, I figure I’ve taken another important step toward retirement.

I no longer want a full-time job. I busted my backside for 40-plus years, most of that time toiling in daily print journalism.

These days, my work consists of essentially two-part time gigs — or maybe one part-time job and another “job” that involves my favorite hobby, which is writing on politics, public policy and other current events. The actual job is at an auto dealership in Amarillo. The fun job is the blog I write for Panhandle PBS, the public TV station based at Amarillo College. (Look up “A Public View” at panhandlepbs.org and you’ll see how much fun I’m having.)

I already have chronicled — a little bit, at least — the circumstances of my departure from daily journalism. The event occurred almost two years ago. I was more than a little unhappy over the circumstance that brought it about.

The bad news is that I went into mourning for a time after I cleared out my office and drove home that day. The good news is that I got over my grief fairly quickly and have been looking forward to the future ever since.

I suppose now I ought to thank my former employer for telling me at the end of August 2012 that someone else would be doing the job I’d been doing at the Amarillo Globe-News for more than 17 years. Maybe I will do so one day. I might thank him for sparing me the chaos I understand has gripped the place as it transitions from what it was to whatever it’s going to become.

I might do that. Just not yet.

Retirement is looking better all the time, although I likely won’t ever give up the writing part of what’s left of my working life. Why would I want to stop receiving the kind of enjoyment I get from prattling on about this and that?