I guess there comes a point in our lives when it's time to think about doing something new and exciting that does not involve work. For me, working 80 to 90 hours a week just don't have the appeal it had a decade ago, and I've been puttin in those hours since I was a kid.

I figgured it was time to shift gears, which I recently did by cutting back on the number of writing jobs to just a half-dozen publications instead of the 25 newspapers ana magazines I had been writing for. One particular publication uncerimonously fired me after 31 years of writing a weekly column. During my three plus decades of tenure I never missed a deadline, and when others went on vacation, I wrote their columns as well. I was pretty upset when the young upstart of an editor dumped me. Now, I'm happy as a clam. The deadline was Saturday--every Saturday, and it took 12 hours to write the column. Now I do what I want, play music for $100 per hour, or just work in the garden. If I have the entire day off, I climb aboard the sailboat, pop the cork on a bottle of Kickapoo Joy Juice, and enjoy a liesurely day on the water.

Relax Russ, take some time off and leave the particulars up to your staff--you've earned it!

Good Luck,

Gary

------------------
Travlin' Easy