{"id":20047,"date":"2017-02-27T21:00:59","date_gmt":"2017-02-27T21:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20047"},"modified":"2017-02-27T21:00:59","modified_gmt":"2017-02-27T21:00:59","slug":"comfortable-in-this-retirement-skin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20047","title":{"rendered":"Comfortable in this retirement skin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today is Monday. It’s a “work day” for those who still have to work for a living.<\/p>\n

It’s also a day in which I made a realization as I walked down the street to collect my mail, before I ran an errand to purchase a couple of musical tickets for my wife and me. It was the realization that I do not miss going to work each day.<\/em><\/p>\n

I am now entirely comfortable in my retirement skin.<\/p>\n

I still work a part-time job. There might be another one resurfacing down the road. However, the idea hit me like a slap in the face today that I no longer miss the daily grind, the deadline pressure associated with the craft I pursued for 37 years.<\/p>\n

I damn sure don’t miss the phone calls from those who dislike something I wrote, some of which ended with someone impugning my integrity, my patriotism … and even my religious faith.<\/p>\n

Daily journalism delivered many gifts to my family and me over many years. It enabled me to do something I still love to do, which is to share my opinions with others and to write editorials on behalf of the newspaper for which I worked. It provided me with a comfortable living — even as I was forced to take two<\/em> cuts in pay during the latter years of my employment as my corporate employer struggled to rid itself of the mountainous debt it had accrued.<\/p>\n

My job gave me the opportunity to see and do things most folks don’t often get to do: landing atop an aircraft carrier and then being catapulted<\/em> off the deck is one of those things; flying over an erupting volcano<\/em> is another; attending and reporting on two presidential nominating conventions ranks up there, too.<\/p>\n

That’s all in the past. I remember the vast bulk of my career with great fondness. The final years? Well, not so much. The end of it and how it occurred? Not at all.<\/p>\n

These days I am free to run errands during the middle of the work day, in the middle of the week. My wife and I avoid the crowds that way, you know?<\/p>\n

This new life also enables me share these views with you on this blog, which keeps me — more or less — in the game, such as it is.<\/p>\n

More travel awaits, too.<\/p>\n

Yes, this retirement life is getting more fun all the time.<\/p>\n\n

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This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement. Today is Monday. It’s a “work day” for those who still have to work for a living. It’s also a day in which I made a realization as I walked down the street to collect my mail, before I ran … Continue reading Comfortable in this retirement skin<\/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":[179,1406,3920,3967],"class_list":["post-20047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-media-news","tag-agn-media","tag-dnc","tag-retirement","tag-rnc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20047","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=20047"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20048,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20047\/revisions\/20048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}