{"id":38116,"date":"2019-07-25T17:31:50","date_gmt":"2019-07-25T17:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=38116"},"modified":"2019-07-25T17:31:50","modified_gmt":"2019-07-25T17:31:50","slug":"happy-trails-part-163-not-missing-work-in-the-least","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=38116","title":{"rendered":"Happy Trails, Part 163: Not missing work … in the least"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This ain’t exactly a flash, but I’ll offer this note nonetheless.<\/p>\n

Retirement has proven to be everything it is cracked up to be — and then some!<\/p>\n

I say this as someone who for 37 or so years relished my craft as few others have done. It’s not that I was a brilliant<\/em> print journalist; I didn’t win a lot of prizes or receive tons of professional acclaim. I did enjoy modest success and I am proud of whatever contributions I was able to make in pursuit of the career I chose.<\/p>\n

To that end, I half-expected to suffer some form of separation anxiety from work when my career ended in late August 2012. It wasn’t an entirely unexpected end, but it came a bit earlier than my wife and I had anticipated.<\/p>\n

Still, when it happened I went on down the proverbial road and have looked back with decreasing frequency as time has marched on.<\/p>\n

Why tell you the obvious? Why say it here?<\/p>\n

It’s just that I keep hearing news reports about the state of print media and how vastly different a form it is taking than what I encountered when I walked into my first newsroom in the early 1970s.<\/p>\n

A friend told me recently that the last newspaper on my journey through print journalism is suffering plummeting circulation numbers. The Amarillo Globe-News is printing about 20 percent of the total daily copies it was printing when I joined the staff in early 1995. For dinosaurs such as me, that is, um, hard to swallow.<\/p>\n

However, I no longer have to worry about my professional future. I am done working for a living. I am free of the hassles, the deadlines, the whims and preferences of my bosses (except, of course, for my wife). I still write, but I write for myself. I can say whatever I feel like saying, within reason, quite obviously.<\/p>\n

I don’t know when this event might occur, but if the opportunity ever presents itself, I might decide — if our paths ever cross — to thank<\/em> the fellow who reorganized me out of a job in 2012. He spared me the misery he and his corporate partners inflicted on so many of the colleagues I left behind.<\/p>\n

I know it’s a form of damnation with faint praise. However, it is sincere. Retirement has made me a happier man.<\/p>\n\n

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This ain’t exactly a flash, but I’ll offer this note nonetheless. Retirement has proven to be everything it is cracked up to be — and then some! I say this as someone who for 37 or so years relished my craft as few others have done. It’s not that I was a brilliant print journalist; … Continue reading Happy Trails, Part 163: Not missing work … in the least<\/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],"tags":[179,2587,3920,5509],"class_list":["post-38116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-agn-media","tag-journalism","tag-retirement","tag-rv-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38116","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=38116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38117,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38116\/revisions\/38117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}