It’s sometimes hard to decide in retrospect when things we do in our lives began.
When I wrote my first column for this paper in 2000, I had no idea at the time how many I would be writing or for how long I would be around to do them even if I wanted to.
At 48 years old, I was what was many years ago referred to as a “cub reporter.”
No one ever never used that term in reference to me, but all I could do at the time was refer in my mind to the position that Jimmy Olsen held at the Daily Planet.
He was young and new at it in every comic book I had ever read. I was instead, old and new at it.
Sure, I had been writing and editing magazines for 25 years at the time I came to work for the Sun Advocate. But a newspaper is a different animal from a magazine, particularly monthly ones like I had worked for. Two deadlines a week, and specials on top of that had me hustling like I was 21 again.
So after that first column I wrote, who knew that I would write a second or a third or a fourth or a fifth or….the 756 I have turned out.
Now that isn’t an exact number because I am not going to go through every issue of the paper to count them. But that is a good estimate, give or take a few.
Add into that sports columns, of which I probably wrote between 20 and 30 in my time as the sports editor. There were some weeks when I wrote two columns. That’s because while I was publisher we not only published an opinion page on Tuesday but at times on Thursday as well.
So the actual beginning of this column is a little murky to me, since after that many, and some that weren’t so good, I have not kept an exact score.
I have had seasoned newspaper people tell me that writing a column or two a week and keeping readers’ interest when doing so is the toughest gig in the newspaper business.
But it is also one of the most rewarding.
When people meet me or see me in the store, at a bank or at an event, few ever comment on stories I wrote for the paper. Some may remember a particular feature I wrote or a story that piqued their interest. But even when I was directly working as an employee of the paper and putting out a half dozen stories a week on everything from county commission meetings to sports stories, the column was usually what people talked to me about.
Writing a column is much more a piece of the person that writes it than a story is, unless that story is a very emotional or a touching one.
A columnist gets to put her or his own ideas out there, rather than just reporting facts about something that happened.
A columnist gets to analyze, plug, skewer, disassemble, pick apart and sometimes even praise social movements, religion, politics, sports, business practices, and any number of things that take place. She or he can also take on their own faults and show people that making fun of one’s own pathetic life can be pretty amusing for the reader and cathartic for the writer.
So now we have talked about the beginning of this column, such as it was.
Now let’s discuss the fact it is time to end it.
When I retired from being the publisher of this paper and the Emery County Progress in 2015, I again had no idea how long this weekly gig would last.
I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do it as long as I wanted or if at some point they would fire me.
Right after I left the paper, as some of you know, I learned that I was not very good at retirement, and began a new business of my own. I started doing public relations work for various local clients, and that has grown in the last two and a half years.
However, that is not the reason this will be the last time I will write a column for this newspaper. I think it is time for someone else to take over this space. Sometimes you just have to know when it is time to end something, and for me the time is now.
I just want to say after 17 and a half years of writing for this paper, I feel so fortunate that I was able to put my thoughts before you and be paid for it. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer, but I never really thought it would come true.
More important, however, is that there are so many people in the community that have encouraged me over the years, and I appreciate them so much.
In addition, even those who discouraged me, I owe some thanks to as well.
I am one of those people when you tell me I can’t do something (or shouldn’t), I find a way to do it anyway.
Just ask my wife. And that brings up my final point.
In many of my columns over the years, I have written about my daily life and the things I have encountered. Within those stories, often my wife has been my foil.
Her ability to contrast my kind of bumbling existence with grace and charm, and most of all logic, has often been the root of the columns I have turned out.
She is not one to seek the limelight in any way, so she has sometimes worried that she has looked a bit foolish in my stories. But I have assured her that when people have talked to me about the columns she has been mentioned in, particularly women, they have seen her as the voice of reason.
So with that it is time to put an end to this long run I have had.
Consequently, now both you the reader, and my wife, can feel relief that it is over.
Of course, the problem my wife has now is that she will still need to put up with me.
But you won’t.
A column to end all (my) columns
Rick Shaw