37-Don't Let What You Do Define Who You Are

How do you determine your self worth? Is it by the church you attend, or maybe the charity is or volunteer work you involve yourself with, or maybe it's the career you spent half a lifetime building. But take it from me, if you ever want to retire comfortably, don't let what you do define who you are. I'm jimpoulling, and this is my view from the middle. I've seen it too many times. A person retires from their career job of a decade or more, but within a month they're either going stir crazy, completely disoriented because their whole life routine has changed, or depressed because they somehow lost their identity and their self worth when they walked out of their office for the last time. I spent forty some years in radio broadcasting. When I was younger, I knew that that's what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be a disc jockey, and although I was never a disc jockey, ninety percent of my being was made up of the radio business. I did just about everything there is to do in the broadcast industry except what had attracted me to it to begin with. Spinning records on the radio I had a program director friend of mine who, when I told him this, said he would gladly let me take some weekend jockshifts on his music radio station, just so I could say I was actually a disc jockey for a short period of time. Problem is, by that time, there were no quote unquote discs involved. Everything was on a computer, and jockshifts for what we call tract meaning the intros and outros to the songs and anything else that needed to be said on the air was recorded ahead of time in a computer and then assembled by that computer so that it sounded like a live disc jockey with spinning records. That's the way most stations do it now, so I declined the offer. My first job in radio was in nineteen seventy nine at a one thousand and all news radio station in Sarasota WQSA. I love that job. I learned more about radio broadcasting in the two years I spent there than anywhere else I would go Afterwards. I learned how to report and write news, how to speak on the air and how to run a radio console, how to produce talk shows, how to host a talk show, how to produce commercials and features, and how to produce a program log. Among other things, I got to do street reporting and cover some significant stories. I was one of the first, if not the first, reporter on the scene when the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay collapsed in nineteen eighty when a freighter rammed into it in a thick fog. Check out my view from the Middle podcast episode called the Day the Skyway Fell for more on that. I saw employment in a bigger radio market with better pay and opportunity, so I moved to fifty thousand want Who, Orlando in nineteen eighty one, where I anchored the news and eventually became news director. During these years, I'm not sure I was the most pleasu person to work with, though I was young, sure of myself, probably to a fault, and arrogant. That all came crashing down in nineteen eighty three when I got called into the program director's office. The conversation started off with Jim the only thing consistent about this business is its inconsistency. Then he proceeded to tell me I was being let go. Like most situations like this, my getting fired from WHOO had nothing to do with my performance. WHOO was in bad straits financially, that acquired a new radio station competitor in the Orlando market K ninety two, and that resulted in a ratings and revenue plummet that would see several people get laid off from the station. I recovered pretty quickly, just a matter of a few weeks before I was working at the Florida Network and WKIS in Orlando. My reputation was apparently pretty good, and the management there was happy to snatch me up and bring me into their organization. I was still pretty cocky and arrogant during this period, although not quite as bad as I had been. Getting laid off. Although not the stigma in the radio business as it sometimes is in other industries, can still give you a wake up call and humble you a bit. But what really knocks the stars out of you is when you get laid off again three years later and no other station in the market standing ready to pick you up. So I went off and did all sorts of weird jobs, most of which were not in broadcasting. I did some independent contractor work for a satellite company where I got to stay at the Los Angeles Dodgers spring training camp Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Florida. That was actually fun and pretty close to the type of work I did for the Florida Network. But once spring training was over, that job ended and I was back on the job hunt again. Having a family to support, I didn't have the luxury of just hanging out until my dream job opened up, so I had to search for a job job, if you know what I mean. I worked for a long distance telephone company for a while until I was life oded. That is, last in, first out when the company started had to struggle and they laid a bunch of people off. Then I actually worked as a wine salesman for two days. Yeah, a wine salesman. I had to learn about different wines and how to sell them to people. Well, that didn't last. Like I said, after two days, I said, see you. Then I sold digital thermostats door to door. Yeah, that pretty much sucked. There was a whole horror story associated with that job, but it didn't last long either. Back in my youth, I worked in retail A and P Grocery and Albertson's Food and Drugs, So I dove back into that. I became an assistant manager of a KB toy store I actually went through manager training and was given my own store to manager in Orlando. But after doing that for a couple of years, my old job at the Florida Network opened up and the new general manager there tracked me down and offered me my position back, so I took it. Stayed there for three decades until I retired at the end of twenty twenty one. Now, retirement consists of six Saturdays and one Sunday every week. That's a little joke some of my retired friends at church tell people, so I kind of stole it from them. But for me, retirement has been great. My wife and I've been able to do a lot of traveling as of today. We've gone to Europe twice, spent on a couple of cruises, and two road trips across the US, not to mention a few excursions out to Colorado to visit my daughter and grandson. My wife and I spent forty some years working our tails off of very little vacation time and the ability to travel, so we're making up for it now. We still have designs and going back to Europe and possibly taking a cruise to Alaska. Yeah, we've been spending a boatload of money on this stuff, but there will come a time when we won't feel like leaving the house anymore, so we're frontloading all these things now. I told myself that if I couldn't afford to do this kind of stuff when I retired, then I wouldn't retire. I wasn't going to spend my retirement years sitting around watching Jeopardy, at least not exclusively. But I'm basically doing things on my schedule now for the most part, in between's appointments. Anyway, that just comes with getting older, I'm afraid. I also started volunteering at the Orlando Health Cancer Institute attached to Orlando Regional Medical Center. Even before I retired, I kept thinking that I'd like to volunteer at a hospital, so I went online and applied, and before I knew it, I'd been volunteering in the guest services department there for going on two years. It's just once a week for four hours. Someone asked me why I didn't put in more hours, and I told them because then it would seem too much like work. My job at the hospital is that of a wayfinder. I show people how to get to their appointments or to someone they're visiting. I push wheelchairs and try to help out some of the people who are having a little trouble getting around. I try to make people who really don't want to be in a hospital, especially a cancer institute, smile some I have about six dad jokes and I circulate them around to the patients and visitors who come in. I figure if I can get a smile out of someone going through a trying situation, then I've done my part. It's the same place where I received my cancer treatments, and I like helping those who are going through the same experience I had, and in many cases a lot worse. After dealing with some of these folks or are going through chemo, radiation, infusion, and bone marrow treatments, I get a little perspective on things and realize that my silly problems are just stupid in comparison. Oh and I love it when they ring the bell at the end of their course of radiation or chemo treatments. I did it when my radiation treatments ended, and so did my daughter when her radiation and chemo treatments were over. It may sound silly if you haven't been through it, but believe me, it's significant. I work with some of the smartest, most professional people that ever worked with In that department. I've learned and I'm still learning a lot from them. Oh when they put up with my six dad jokes too. I've never once regretted retiring when I did. With all the nastiness going on in the radio industry and media in general, I look back and say, thank God, I'm not in the middle of that anymore. I've never felt stir crazy. I've welcomed the change in life routine, and my identity doesn't feel compromised because I'm not a manager in a radio company anymore, with all the pressures, aggravations and responsibilities that came along with the job. I think the identity thing is that way because I did jump around to different jobs there for a while. I mean, you can't have your ego tied up in a radio management job while you're putting Barbie Dreamhouses on a shelf, or selling long distance service or thermostats. It taught me that I can't allow myself worth to be tied to my career. I became a lot less cocky during those years I was bouncing around to those weird jobs, hopefully making me a more mature and reasonable boss and manager for those who worked with me, and for me. I learned a lot moving around in those jobs too. KB Toys, a company that no longer exists, actually had an excellent management training program. It wasn't just retail concepts, but instruction on how to deal with employees and how to organize. I can't say as I enjoyed working for that company, but I will give them credit for a training program that helped me not only on the job running a toy store, but also later managing employees at the radio network and radio station as well. So here I am in the middle forty years of a substantial radio career behind me that I'm proud of but not married to, and hopefully many years ahead traveling and doing things on my own schedule. I'm sure there will come a time and I'll have to slow things down, but for now, I'm enjoying life because when I said goodbye to my career, I adhere to a very basic principle. Don't let what you do define who you are. I'm jimpulling, and that's my view for another time. Don't