Transitions: Finding Purpose when 'Retirement" Comes Early

Nearly three months ago, I found myself thrust into retirement.

I had begun months before making preparations and inquiries about 401K rollovers, Medicare, Social Security, etc., feeling (providentially, as it turned out) compelled to get a head start on a process. I did not expect I would have to pursue for at least another year, if not longer.

Actually, I was sure I'd have another year: time to think about what retirement for a lifelong journalist, writer and editor would look like, and how to make that transition.

I was wrong. On May 14, along with 40 percent of the already dwindling staff at The Salt Lake Tribune, I was let go. Thanks, they said, for the 20 years; you did great work, but the newspaper can no longer support the staff numbers with advertising tanking, and the online model still adrift in the becalmed, profit-poor seas of the Internet.

Sixteen weeks of severance pay was nice, albeit not even a week's worth for every year I had worked to the paper. Medical insurance was yanked in two weeks -- a real blow for most of the stunned victims of the "reduction in force" not fortunate enough as me to be just a few weeks shy of their 65th birthdays, and thus Medicare eligibility.

It was nasty, but it was not personal; managers giving the bad news in some cases teared up. But for all of us, it was what it was. And it hurt, perhaps in a weird way, more so since it was so abrupt, and in many ways nonsensical in choices made about what beats (and people) stayed, and which/who remained.

Still, I imagine many of my fellow sacrificial lambs on the altar of failed newspaper economics would happily trade their current anxieties -- income about to run out by now, lack of medical coverage, lack of prospects in a disappearing industry -- for mere malaise over such nebulous matters as "purpose."

But that's my cross to bear, as it were.

When your work was your purpose, when exploring and exploring, mulling and reporting on Life and Faith and Trauma and Love and Setbacks and Triumphs defined your raison d'être, the world -- or your tiny piece of it -- made sense.

Now, I find that was illusion. Oh, it was an amazing ride -- exhilarating, maddening, challenging, frustrating, fulfilling, revealing glimpses of ultimate Truth, between epiphanies of the limits of mortal intellect.

But, Purpose? No, it never was. Actually, I now believe, it was something of an escape and counterfeit for Purpose, speaking in the ultimate sense -- it filled up my thoughts, desires, goals, emotions and self-image, allowing me to put off the Big Questions.

These are the times that test your faith, whatever form that takes. And that faith had better be real, grounded and strong once roused from the dormancy our busy lives impose on it. If it is not, you stare into the Abyss, and it looks back at you, whispering, "What have you really done with your life?"

Better to be able to find not the darkness and realization that a lifetime has all but passed on its march to loss of meaning, but to fall to your knees and see the Face of God.

That visage shines in a nighttime of stars, the waves of horizonless oceans, the way the wind caresses the fields of grass, the leaves and branches of trees, and brushes the banks of rivers and lakes with waves that ripple in light.

That face is of wisdom and love that defies our poor concept of Infinity, yet twinkles in the eyes of a child, the tears of those who mourn, the first breath of an infant, the last gasp of the dying.

All those things, yes. And for me, Eternity descends like a cloud of uncreated light and mercy during the ancient prayers of the Eastern Orthodox liturgy, and Love takes residence in the bread and wine of the Eucharist.

There is Purpose. But how to understand it? And now, at this stage of life, how does this Purpose become my life?

This road -- not a new one but largely, I confess a poorly explored one -- stretches before me, as the prayer says, "both now and forever, and unto the ages of ages."

That now has become my primary purpose. My secondary purpose? That would be how to express creativity and curiosity and to somehow use my acquired skills of a lifetime to still educate and encourage.

And that is what remains a work in progress.

Stupid reporter tricks: The Case of the Exploding Cigarette

I recently was reminiscing with a colleague about stupid reporter tricks.

I've committed . . . a few.

 I recalled that, some 35 years ago at a Spokane, Wash., alternative newspaper, I stuffed match heads into the cigarettes of my managing editor while he was at lunch. 

He returned, and I could hear his Zippo click open. He must have gotten two, maybe three puffs before the flare. (That is not him below, by the way. But it illustrates the tale, albeit it bit exaggerated.)

I still recall the shrieks of obscenities that blew forth from his office, followed a ragged breath or two later by an angry, "Mims! Get in here!"

 Not only were the still glowing shreds of tobacco just beginning to halt their rain onto his desktop, but he claimed the flare had singed his moustache and eyebrows.

Good thing that he was my friend. Remarkably, he still is.

Also, good thing my current editor at the Salt Lake Tribune doesn't smoke.

Hey, I may be 60 now, but that impish 20-something guy is still sloshing around inside and occasionally rears his horned head.

After all, years after the Exploding Cig Incident, I left a phone message note for my boss at Associated Press with a number that answered with a recorded come on for a dating service. 

It began, "Hey, big boy . . ." I kid you not.

Said editor was both irritated and amused, I think, in equal measure.

He was less reticent about his orders to never do that again.

AP also brought out the beat/worst of my competitive nature. Misdirecting rival UPI reporters, unscrewing mouthpieces of pay telephones after racing to one to dictate breaking news, ducking under police barricades to get close to mudslides and semi truck explosions . . . and being chased by a bull during one of the latter incidents as I crossed a pasture, after climbing through a dry canal under a blocked off freeway.

I may grow up, some day.  

Probably, when I'm dead.

 

Musings from the Beltway: Newspapers' demise and an informed electorate

This will be the first of several blogs from my recent trip to the East Coast and the Beltway.

I guess that chronologically is usually the way to go with such endeavors, but my mind works differently.

Instead, I will dispense with the event that, even 1,800 miles removed, affected me personally the most: the massive layoffs at The Salt Lake Tribune.

It is where I do my day job; it has been for the past 15 years since I escaped, finally, an unstable and often malevolent boss at the national news service where I had worked for 18 years, three months, 12 days and 5.5 hours.

I learned about the layoffs, my good fortune and the misery of the unlucky, in a telephone call from my editor.

The newspaper industry's woes are well known, and they have not skipped the Trib. In the past two years we have lost half our staff, and cuts that came, unexpected and deep, at my vacation's mid-point were devastating.

So, I kept my job; 20 percent of the remaining staff did not. What the future holds only God knows. I may work at the Trib until I retire in 5-10 years or so, or I may find myself joining my now-unemployed colleagues when the next unexpected cuts come.

End of the year budget reviews come to mind, though -- as we have been told with lessening conviction by management in the past 3-4 layoffs -- this latest, most painful cutback is hoped to be the last.

I put my trust in God . . . and continue to beat the bushes for freelance work with an eye to the time when I may have to depend on such opportunities to pay the mortgage.

So, there's my personal reaction. My professional reaction is far deeper: I fear for our already tattered republic is professional, balanced and investigative journalism disappears, along with newspapers.

Not that newspapers have done well, in my opinion, in living up to their supposed commitment to fairness and balance in reporting. They have not done so.

Still, they provide the best foundation for those informational elements that keep the electorate informed.

Founding Father Thomas Jefferson was abused horribly by the press, but still held that a free, unfettered journalism was essential to our nation's political health:

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be," he said.

As I visited the monuments and memorials spread along the National Mall in Washington, D.C., recently -- including one honoring Jefferson -- I mourned for my departed colleagues and wondered how the electorate will be adequately informed in the future as they make choices that affect us all.

Maybe the best 'revenge' really is forgiving?

I could only laugh, with not a little bitterness -- tempered by the survivalist humor I've learned to cultivate as an observer of human nature -- when I read of a columnist in my home state of Washington citing commentary on his writings as part of the reason he's hanging it up.
More to the point, Steve Kelley of the Seattle Times referred to the tendency of commenters, protected by anonymity, to slither into the depths of human meanness, cyber-stalking and character assassination. This has become predominant in many of the so-called "public forums" newspapers provide online for their articles.
Most papers have moderators assigned to identify and delete the most egregious comments, and some commenters even get the boot for repeated personal attacks, profanity, racism or bigotry. But it is an easy thing for them to recreate themselves with new "handles" and resume their diatribes.
Such is the case with a former boss of mine. Almost 15 years after I tendered by resignation and left him in his black cloud of impotent rage, the man periodically shows up under various identities. At one point, a moderator at our paper found he had created no less than six identities to comment negatively on every story I wrote.
Each account was terminated and yet he would return. Eventually, his IP addresses were identified and blocked. But it is no difficult thing to change IP addresses, and he has. His most recent identity was that of a faux female, but as always, his bipolar (diagnosed) arrogance was his undoing. Too many little hints dropped in comments here and there.
This time, though, I have asked his account not be deleted. Part of the reason is realization that doing that only feeds his anger and desire for retribution for imagined wrongs. But the larger reason is pity.
His unrelenting hatred, expressed in the comments, gives me regular practice at forgiving. And in a world where so many people act on perceived slights to the harm of themselves and others, at least this is a real, repeated offense.
Life gives us malevolent mysteries, does it not? Instances where we endure the ill-will of someone and never quite figure out, Why?
Sometimes, there is no answer. There is no logic to mental illness, no reasoning with psychosis. So, what else is there to do but forgive?
Maybe Kelley has his own cyber-stalkers and has just decided enough is enough.
As he puts it: “The level of discourse has become so inane and nasty. And it’s not just at the Times, it’s ESPN, everywhere – people, anonymous people, take shots at the story, writers, each other. Whatever you’ve achieved in that story gets drowned out by this chorus of idiots.”
I understand the sentiment. Still, I have to work for a living: Too many people depend on me to just give up.
And, it's just not my nature.
What goes around, comes around. That will happen all by itself; I don't need to push it along.
So, I will continue to forgive. It's been well past Christ's "seventy times seven," in this case.
But the lesson was this: Strike back, hold hatred or offense, and you not only feel the pain of the blow, but you allow it to cripple you spiritually.
And the lesson is this, now: To one for whom much has been forgiven, much forgiveness is expected.
That's me.