{"id":49511,"date":"2021-10-25T00:46:24","date_gmt":"2021-10-25T00:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=49511"},"modified":"2021-10-25T00:46:24","modified_gmt":"2021-10-25T00:46:24","slug":"retirement-getting-easier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=49511","title":{"rendered":"Retirement: getting easier"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Retirement-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-14345\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Retirement-1-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Retirement-1-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Retirement-1-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Retirement-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Retirement-1.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The thought occurs to me that the longer I am retired, the easier it becomes for me to say \u201cI am retired.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yes, there was a time not long after my career in journalism came to an end that I was uncomfortable acknowledging my retired status. Granted, I didn\u2019t actually officially \u201cretire\u201d until about three years after that day arrived, when I turned 66. I filed for Social Security, got my award and have been collecting it ever since.<\/p>\n<p>But the idea of being \u201cretired\u201d was so totally foreign to my way of thinking that I actually struggled emotionally with acknowledging that status.<\/p>\n<p>Full disclosure time: I am at this moment still \u201cretired,\u201d but I am working a couple of part-time jobs. I write for a weekly newspaper in Farmersville, Texas, and I cover water issues for KETR-FM radio based at Texas A&amp;M University-Commerce. Both gigs are a lot of fun. I have in a way sort of come full circle. The Farmersville job allows me to cover city council stories and school board stories, along with the occasional soft feature. The KETR job allows me to dig into reporting on the construction of two reservoirs in Northeast Texas.<\/p>\n<p>When I get asked, though, I say, \u201cOh, I\u2019m retired.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The words just fly out of my mouth. The evolution into retirement well might be an ongoing work in progress. Hey, no sweat. I\u2019ve got the time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\" style=\"text-align: right;\"><a href=\"mailto:johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com\">johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The thought occurs to me that the longer I am retired, the easier it becomes for me to say \u201cI am retired.\u201d Yes, there was a time not long after my career in journalism came to an end that I was uncomfortable acknowledging my retired status. Granted, I didn\u2019t actually officially \u201cretire\u201d until about three &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=49511\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Retirement: getting easier<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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":[3920],"class_list":["post-49511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-retirement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49511","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=49511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49512,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49511\/revisions\/49512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}