{"id":20293,"date":"2017-03-11T00:50:46","date_gmt":"2017-03-11T00:50:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20293"},"modified":"2017-03-11T00:50:46","modified_gmt":"2017-03-11T00:50:46","slug":"former-life-offers-humbling-reminder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20293","title":{"rendered":"Former life offers humbling reminder"},"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

I am living a life in two parts.<\/p>\n

The first was geared toward crafting a career; the second is developing a life beyond that career.<\/p>\n

As I move farther into the second part of life, I find myself intersecting with what I used to do, when I “worked for a living.”<\/p>\n

I work part-time for an auto dealership in Amarillo. My job is to work with customers as a service department “concierge.” I wear a name badge. Customers walk into our service waiting area and some of them spot my name tag and will say something like, “Hey, aren’t you the guy who worked at the newspaper?” I tell them yes.<\/p>\n

We engage in some small talk that involves my former job, which I left more than four years ago.<\/p>\n

Why mention all of this? I guess it is to acknowledge publicly how humbling it is to realize that what I used to do — which was write editorials and columns while editing the Opinion page of the local newspaper — had some measure of impact on people’s lives.<\/p>\n

I find that gratifying and — as I think about it — a bit unnerving.<\/p>\n

The gratification comes as people still recognize my name all these years after I resigned my post at the Amarillo Globe-News. It gives me no small level of satisfaction to believe I had some impact on those who see a name they recognize from the newspaper.<\/p>\n

I don’t presume that the impact was always a positive<\/em> one. I occasionally hear from those I meet who tell me “I didn’t usually agree with your point of view, but I read it.”<\/p>\n

They read<\/em> it. That’s all that matters. I am not kidding about that. I always knew that people’s minds don’t change because of something they read. I also know that most of us have our own world view and I never should expect to change anyone’s mind any more than my own mind would change if I read something with which I disagree.<\/p>\n

To be sure I get a bit unnerved about these meetings, too. I don’t freeze. I like to think I can engage most<\/em> perfect strangers in collegial conversation. The unnerving comes when I try to cope with these perfect strangers recognizing my name in the first place.<\/p>\n

I joke with some of them that the ethnic sound to my name is what sticks in their memory. Oh, no, they respond. That’s not it. OK. I’ll accept your answer.<\/p>\n

The second part of the life I intend to pursue with my wife awaits. It’s just difficult at times to shake that first part loose. I enjoy reliving that prior life.<\/p>\n

The first part is likely to disappear when we move on down the road.<\/p>\n

We are getting ready for that moment.<\/p>\n\n

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This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement. I am living a life in two parts. The first was geared toward crafting a career; the second is developing a life beyond that career. As I move farther into the second part of life, I find myself intersecting with … Continue reading Former life offers humbling reminder<\/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":[179,3920],"class_list":["post-20293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-media-news","tag-agn-media","tag-retirement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20293","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=20293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20294,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20293\/revisions\/20294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}