Checking out and checking in

Working got a little wispy on Christmas Eve. On duty in the newsroom were people who had gone to war together and survived, people who had watched their children grow together and taken their lumps as colleagues. We had mourned over lost friends and cried when we buried them. We had fun, and during bad times we stuck together. Colleagues become your friends and finally your family. You suffer when they suffer and celebrate when they're joyous.

We've done that at the Ledger-Enquirer for the 35 years I've been there. Now my clock is ticking. At a luncheon where we met our new publisher we also welcomed Kaffie Sledge into the 30 Year Club. While we ate something alleged to be chicken kiev, we looked over old issues of an inhouse newsletter, noticing how many of the faces in those pictures were gone.

Someone asked how many days I had until retirement. I had to tally them. As I write, there are 38 days, and that counts the holiday for New Years and the weekends. It is time I sorted through the collection of important junk on my desk, putting most of it in the trash and hording the rest, wondering where I'll put it if I take it home.

Holidays make us look back and look ahead. Retiring helps you accept the fact that there is less ahead than there is behind. I'll still write my column twice a week, but as Mark Rice pointed out I'll write from a different position. I won't be in the newsroom, a place I've spent two-thirds of my life. I've found a new place to perch that I call Richard Hyatt's Columbus, a Website where I'll take you behind the news and tell you why the stories occured.

I'm excited, scared and sad. This is the first time I've ever retired and nobody said it was easy. I felt excited, scared and sad when I arrived at the Ledger-Enquirer in 1972 and I feel the same way now.

Circles never stop, do they?