Hanging up the Headphones

I seemed to have caused a bit of a stir in the office yesterday when I sent this short email: "Wanted to let you know I am retiring on August 16. It's been fun working with y'all."

It apparently caught everyone by surprise because all I could hear from the other side of the building was “WHAT?!” Mikey O just popped his head in and asked if “yesterday was a dream.” Well, no. I really am going to retire on my birthday.

Our digital guy [who is amazing, by the way. -Ed.] gave me grief over the fact that I wrote this nice story about my 25th anniversary a couple of weeks ago, then followed it up with this little two-sentence email about retiring. I just didn’t feel the need to rehash everything. I wrote this story a few years back when I marked my 40th year in radio.

Of course, people ask what I’m going to do with all my free time. Well, we have this door that we refinished one side of several years ago and now the inside needs to be finished. Ninety-five percent of the paint is off, so that is project number one. There’s other miscellaneous stuff to do, and I do have a hobby to get back into.

Some also asked if we were moving closer to family since we’re not from around here. The answer to that is no. The house is paid for, we have friends, doctors, and hairdressers (not that I have much) all here. Why start over?

It’s been a great career. I have worked with and now work with some wonderful people. There’s a saying about if you love your job, it’s not really work or something like that, and I’ve always said, "This sure beats working for a living."