{"id":16819,"date":"2016-08-28T23:51:44","date_gmt":"2016-08-28T23:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=16819"},"modified":"2016-08-29T00:01:26","modified_gmt":"2016-08-29T00:01:26","slug":"anniversary-reminds-me-of-how-things-can-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=16819","title":{"rendered":"Anniversary reminds me of how things can work out"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"retirement.pic_\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This is another in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement.<\/em><\/p>\n

Everything happens for a reason. Is that too clich\u00e9 to repeat here? Probably, but I just did it anyway.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Later this week marks the fourth year since my full-time journalism career came to\u00a0a sudden\u00a0end. I wasn’t quite ready for it to conclude in that manner. It did, though.<\/p>\n

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<\/em> — at the same time.<\/p>\n

I collected myself,\u00a0went 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

We came home and started thinking about what we would do next.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Oh, sure, employers said they didn’t consider that. I know better. Ageism exists, man.<\/p>\n

I decided to start the transition into retirement.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0news features\u00a0for KFDA News Channel 10, blogs (until recently) for Panhandle PBS and helping produce the Quay County Sun weekly newspaper in Tucumcari, N.M.<\/p>\n

Along the way I made a startling discovery.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

My wife has told me I seem less stressed out these days. Hmmm. Imagine that.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press and United Press International style books always instructed us to “avoid clich\u00e9s like the plague.”<\/p>\n

Thus, the clich\u00e9 about things happening for a reason seems\u00a0so trite.<\/p>\n

Except that in this case, it’s\u00a0flat-out true.<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is another in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement. Everything happens for a reason. Is that too clich\u00e9 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, … Continue reading Anniversary reminds me of how things can work out<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[179,5671,3487,3920],"class_list":["post-16819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-media-news","tag-agn-media","tag-kfda-newschannel-10","tag-panhandle-pbs","tag-retirement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16819"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16824,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16819\/revisions\/16824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}