"As of Dec. 29, 2017, I will no longer be working for [publishing company] or [specialized economic publication]. If you wish to reach me with a personal message, please email me at [email]."
When you're setting up something like that up it's almost like writing your own obituary. If you're retiring and letting go of a company you headed for decades and a publication you wrote for longer, it might as well be.
On my last week, a think tank sent me a canned email in name of a wonk I knew -- how my inbox used to bulge with press releases and urgent messages from advocates! I had picked her brain about technical matters that I was writing about. She'd done well taking over the duties of a famed economist, I wrote her, and later in a high-level federal position. She replied thanking me and wished me well even though she probably did not really remember me.
As for me, not one professional who actually knew me remarked on my departure.
"The graveyards are full of indispensable men," said Charles DeGaulle, himself having laid claim to the title once or three times. Truman said it best about my city: "If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog."
Frankly, my kind of journalism was never glamorous. No Kardashians. No sex. No violence. No rock and roll. The company continues, the publication goes on. My "battleship of a desk" as one editor put it -- emptied of my ephemera -- remains in use.
Me? I'm just an dispensable man, writing for my pleasure on my laptop, in the public library.
