This one hurts

So yesterday was Joey's last day at work. At our place of work, that is. It's not like once you leave a job--in her case, take the buyout--you never work again. She has lots of plans. But none of them involve daily journalism anymore.

She and I started at the News-Tribune the same year: 1976. She was the first female photographer the paper had ever had.

We've been friends ever since. She and I played Chinese Checkers with the Mexican military. She and I went to Russia together. She and I reported from Cuba. She and I went on countless road trips all over the Iron Range and northern Minnesota and have countless stories we could tell you. But you'd have to buy us a beer.

For the last ten years or so, she's been my frequent noontime walking partner sounding board rant-listener-to and teller of jokes. How odd and empty it will feel, not to have her around.

Now, her desk is cleaned out and emptied and when I go in to work this morning, she won't be there. (In this picture, she is pretending to look sad.)

She has tons of plans. She'll be fine. I've stayed in touch with some of the people who took last year's buyout, and they are all pretty happy--some extremely so. I know it's a tough transition, to go from the routine of a daily job, to no routine in particular. To go from the assurance of having a job, and being a profession, to no outside assurance.

But as one guy I used to work with said, wisely, "Every morning I look in the mirror, and I'm still me." A job doesn't define you; it's just that without a job you have to come up with your own definition. Hard to do, when you've had a job for thirty years or so.

I have no worries about Joey going through that transition--she is multi-talented, she has a ton of interests, she has a million friends, she is already scooping up freelance opportunities, and she has a lot of things she wants to do. She has plans.

For those of us who haven't the courage, or the desire, or the financial wherewithal to retire early, it's odd: We watch our good friends and respected colleagues wave goodbye and head off into entirely new lives. And while we're not unhappy to be left behind, there is still a feeling that--yes, we're being left behind.

Meanwhile, Joey has graciously agreed to join the Peter Miller Club, so you haven't seen the last of her. Nor, thankfully, have I.