{"id":27900,"date":"2018-02-05T03:02:24","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T03:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=27900"},"modified":"2018-02-05T03:02:24","modified_gmt":"2018-02-05T03:02:24","slug":"happy-trails-part-73","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=27900","title":{"rendered":"Happy Trails, Part 73"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The question comes to me almost weekly.<\/p>\n

I’ll run into longtime friends or acquaintances and they inevitably ask: How do you like retirement?<\/p>\n

My answer is usually the same: If I were doing any better I’d be twins.<\/p>\n

One former colleague who now lives in Houston asked me that very question about a year ago. I gave him the answer. His response? “I’ve never met a retired person who doesn’t love being retired.”<\/p>\n

There you have it. My friend has said I fit the mold of your standard, run-of-the-mill retired guy.<\/p>\n

What my friend also understands is that my journey toward retired contentment — and, yes, the joy it brings — didn’t start out that way. My retirement journey began unhappily. I wasn’t yet ready to call it quits when I did. I resigned my last newspaper job — at the Amarillo Globe-News — in a fit of emotional pain.<\/p>\n

The truth is that it didn’t take me long to realize that my former employer actually did me a favor. I sent myself out to pasture. The pain that I felt on my last day of employment dissipated quickly.<\/p>\n

I’ve known many people over the years who have gone through circumstances quite similar to what I encountered. They had been reorganized out of jobs, too.<\/p>\n

Here is what I rediscovered about myself. I am a highly adaptable creature. I discovered by adaptability when my family and I moved from Oregon to Texas in the spring of 1984 and exposed ourselves to a serious culture shock. We adapted. My wife and I went through another form of culture shock when we moved from Beaumont to Amarillo in January 1995. We adapted to that change yet again.<\/p>\n

My wife and I are going to embark on one more big challenge as we prepare to relocate once more, from the High Plains to North Texas.<\/p>\n

My adaptability skills will come into play once again.<\/p>\n

The only part of my new life that won’t<\/em> change — ever! — is a return to the working world. I’ve done my time there.<\/p>\n

Retirement really is so very good.<\/p>\n\n

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The question comes to me almost weekly. I’ll run into longtime friends or acquaintances and they inevitably ask: How do you like retirement? My answer is usually the same: If I were doing any better I’d be twins. One former colleague who now lives in Houston asked me that very question about a year ago. … Continue reading Happy Trails, Part 73<\/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":[9,18],"tags":[179,1936,2121,3920,4058,4668],"class_list":["post-27900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-state-news","tag-agn-media","tag-golden-triangle","tag-high-plains","tag-retirement","tag-rv","tag-texas-panhandle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27900","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=27900"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27901,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27900\/revisions\/27901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}