I wrote my last column for the paper today, a very bittersweet experience. I've enjoyed my eight years of being a columnist, although the slightly-raised public profile has honestly been a bit weird at times. When I first started writing the column, I had a by-line using my name only. A couple of years on, the paper started using pictures of their columnists, and I found myself getting recognized in restaurants, in the store, and shopping around town (I live in a very small town). It was a bit uncomfortable for me, because I'm normally a pretty private person. But gradually I adjusted. Getting older (while my pic in the paper did not) also helped, since I gradually came to look less and less like the 2001 self in the picture I'd given them to use. A former columnist for the paper, Anthony Cicale, told me to find a picture that looked as unlike the normal "me" as possible in order to protect my day-to-day privacy, and I'm glad I did.
The best part of writing the column has, of course, been the actual writing itself, and connecting with readers when I captured what they were thinking right along with me. To feel passionately about something and be able to give it a public platform is both a great gift and a great responsibility, and that has been very gratifying.
But there are certain times in one's life when transition is the name of the game, and when the old has to be cast off to make way for the new -- even when the new has not yet taken shape. It needs a vacant space to move into. And so, my writing career for this paper, in this town, is over, ending on a good note.
I will never stop writing, but there's a "vacant" sign hanging in the space I used to write my column in, in my life. What will God bring into my life that will fill it up? I don't know. I have some ideas and some dreams. But I'm getting the space ready for whatever comes next.
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