Looking into the crystal ball

April 11, 2009

And so it was that I was able to enjoy a beautiful spring day in Buffalo, to focus on the sunshine, the company of my family and the freedom to dream of the future.

Where will I be two years from now?

I believe we will still be living in suburban Buffalo, in our same home of the past 21 years. We will still have our little cottage on the Vukote Canal and enjoy the company of all of our friends and the splendor of Chautauqua Lake.

As for myself, I see myself in front of the classroom in a college environment, but I can’t tell if it’s a junior college or a university setting. Writing is still a vocation and I will be employed by several Web sites to blog and edit. I will have plenty of personal freedom, to come and go as I please for the workday, as long as I’m in my appointed classes on time, of course.

Judy and I will be very happy, maybe even grandparents. All three children will be gainfully employed and living in various parts of the country, so we will have places to visit and explore.

From the tumultuous year that is to come will blossom great opportunity and enjoyment. I have come to believe in the past 10 days that a higher power drove my decision to leave The News. There is a great and noble calling waiting for me. When is comes, I will be ready.

That is my future, as I see it today, but I know the road there won’t be an easy one.

(When all is said and done, I knew what my future at the newspaper held: I’d be assigned to a desk and computer for another 10 years producing word widgets -- “hanging on,” as they say -- if the print product survives that long.)

I’m hoping that yesterday was the “tipping point” where I put any regrets about leaving The News behind me and make my way boldly into the future.

Son James had a piece of advice for me that I recalled today: Every day, you should challenge yourself to do something out of your comfort zone. (That kid has come a long way during his three years at John Carroll University.) That includes anything from listening to some different music to visiting a museum that you’ve never seen before. Or maybe just getting up two hours earlier than normal.

How many people do that? Not very many. Most of us rise at the same time, eat the same breakfast, drive the same route to work, sit at the same desk, do the same work, eat with the same people, listen to the same radio stations and watch the same idiot box every night, then we turn in at the same appointed hour.

The blessed wife also counseled that we didn’t have much change in our first 32 years together, but because we, and most people we know, are aging, there is bound to be waves of changes during the next 32 years. So you might as well get into the “change groove.”

By the summer of 2010, I will be the guru of change.