Digressions: My Life in 500 Words or Less

Sometimes, your path in life is clear, and you find yourself anticipating your destination. Sometimes your path is clear, but you find you enjoy detours along the way. And sometimes you just know when it is time to travel a new path.

On June 5, I worked my last day as a features writer at The News-Enterprise, the newspaper in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. I had given my notice two weeks earlier.

I didn’t know what awaited me, what the future held. But it was time.

I didn’t have a job lined up when I gave my notice. I had no definite plans. I knew only it was time to start a new chapter in my life.

In the weeks preceding my departure, life had dealt some tough blows to me and my other half, Rebecca Ricks, including the loss of my father, the loss of one of her brothers and the loss of a friend. All this occurred within about a month of each other, in the case of her brother and our friend, only a day.

Though those events were not the reason for my decision to leave the newspaper, they made the time of change and transition more stressful than what it might have been.

I had put in nine years with The News-Enterprise this last stint, from April 2008 until May 2017. I had previously worked there four years, from October 1989 until November 1993. Before that, I had worked two years for The Kentucky Standard, the newspaper in Bardstown owned by the same company that owned The News-Enterprise.

All totaled, I worked 15 years for the company.

But it was time for a new path.

Just before I left the newspaper, I was contacted about a job I applied for as an instructor for Hardin County Adult and Community Education. Five days before my last day with the newspaper, I interviewed for the job and was offered the position at the end of the interview. The day before my last day at the newspaper, on June 4, I accepted the position.

About the same time, Rebecca interviewed for a new part-time job because she, too, realized it was time for a new path. It was time for her to leave the one she was on. She accepted the new position and began working immediately, but she agreed to stay at her other job for a while.

During our transitions, our Pomeranians, Tybalt and Zorro, have been affected by the changes. All our schedules are different. Our lives have changed.

And where our paths will lead is still uncertain.

But it was time.

And we face our separate journeys together.