{"id":49775,"date":"2021-11-28T16:52:13","date_gmt":"2021-11-28T16:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=49775"},"modified":"2021-11-28T17:28:09","modified_gmt":"2021-11-28T17:28:09","slug":"one-huge-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=49775","title":{"rendered":"One huge surprise!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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You\u2019ve heard it said that \u201clife is full of surprises,\u201d or at least it\u00a0ought<\/em>\u00a0to contain a surprise or two as we move on through our time on this good Earth.<\/p>\n

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the retirement journey my wife and I began some years ago has taken a most astounding turn. Where it goes \u2026 let me explain.<\/p>\n

We were camping in our RV the other day when I received an e-mail from the acting editorial page editor of the Dallas Morning News. He said he wanted to discuss something with me. I read the message and told my wife what it said. I thought, \u201cWhat in the world \u2026 ?\u201d<\/p>\n

I called him. Rudy Bush, the acting EPE at the Morning News, informed me he had been reading my blog and had seen some of the work I had done for KETR-FM radio at Texas A&:M-Commerce. He then told me he needed help at the DMN, that he was working with a short-handed staff; that his staff is burning out and that he wanted little ol\u2019 me to lend a hand writing editorials for the newspaper.<\/p>\n

Now, you have to understand something about yours truly. When I got into journalism in the 1970s, I had aspired to write for a major metro newspaper. I sought many times over the course of my career to achieve that goal. I ended up writing during the bulk of my career for two mid-sized dailies. I had a nice career. I believe I did my job well.<\/p>\n

What happened at the RV park in Northeast Texas, though, caught me by complete surprise.<\/p>\n

The result is that at the age of nearly 72, I am going to see my dream come true \u2026 if only for a limited period of time. I phone him back the next morning to tell him \u201cyes,\u201d that I would like to help him out. It will be, as they called it in the Army, a\u00a0TDY assignment\u00a0<\/em>\u2026 temporary duty.<\/p>\n

I will continue to cover city council, school district issues and write occasional features for the Farmersville Times; I also will continue to cover water resource development in Fannin County for KETR-FM radio. On top of that I will write editorials for the Dallas Morning News.<\/p>\n

And just to be crystal clear, my bride and I will continue to haul our RV around behind our pickup for a little R&R.<\/p>\n

I found myself grappling with competing thoughts in my noggin. One thought was,\u00a0\u201cWhy don\u2019t you just toss it all aside, sit back, relax and enjoy the fruits of your retirement?\u201d<\/em>\u00a0The other thought was,\u00a0\u201cWhy would you want to pass up this opportunity, which you strived to find, and accept the challenge that awaits you?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I decided to heed the latter thought.<\/p>\n

So \u2026 off we go, racing toward a new challenge.<\/p>\n

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n

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You\u2019ve heard it said that \u201clife is full of surprises,\u201d or at least it\u00a0ought\u00a0to contain a surprise or two as we move on through our time on this good Earth. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the retirement journey my wife and I began some years ago has taken a most astounding turn. Where it goes \u2026 … Continue reading One huge surprise!<\/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":[10],"tags":[1243],"class_list":["post-49775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-news","tag-dallas-morning-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49775","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=49775"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49778,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49775\/revisions\/49778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}