This time of sorting out, throwing out, summing up and turning in evolved into an archeological dig of sorts.
The new laptop recently issued by the company. The hand-held video camera that I used in sports. The corporate AmEx that made bookkeeping easier back in the day, when I was taking those TV critic trips to California.
Finally, in my home office where hundreds of press credentials hang, in a seldom-opened desk drawer littered with ticket stubs dating back to the Albany-Colonie Yankees, I unearthed my pre-cellphone, pre-email pager. I simply forgot I had it.
If I never got back to you, um, sorry.
Yeah, I've been here a while — more than 22 years — and have had the opportunity to move around a bit in these pages. I once wrote a goodbye column from the TV beat, and later a farewell one for sports. Now comes this, an amen:
Today is my last day at the Times Union, and in all likelihood in newspapering as a full-time gig. I've taken another job in the area outside of the business.
It's just time.
Print journalism, here at the Times Union and everywhere else, is a different pursuit than the one I first took up in search of an easy high school English credit more than three decades ago. Obviously, the technological revolution that arrived with the Internet changed the economics and operation of the game.
While this upheaval certainly presented hardships on both the business and news sides of newspapering, it also has resulted in an explosion of innovation and interaction on the journalism end that's made these recent hard years the most stimulating. (For example: Check out the changes coming to the TU in the weeks ahead at www.timesunion.com/newtu/.)
Our core mission never changed: Find important and/or interesting stories and report them. The difference came in ways we could tell those tales, and how readers, once mostly bystanders, became active participants through blogs and social media. What was once a monologue became a conversation — sometimes entertaining and informative, other times childish and churlish. Regardless, these discussions, as messy as democracy itself, added to the discourse.
I'll miss it. But I also feel confident this decision is the right one for my family and career. Besides, I get to depart with the best of gifts: A deep sense of gratitude.
For the places I've gone. For the stories and events I've covered. For the people I've encountered and worked with, including a fellow TU reporter I met as a relative kid who later became my wife: book columnist Donna Liquori.
I'm grateful for the newspaper I've worked for, which sent me to Hollywood and a Super Bowl and NCAAs and to bear witness in Lower Manhattan after 9/11 and on so many other assignments. It's a different newspaper than the one I joined in 1990, smaller in staff but pound-for-pound better in talent.
Finally, I'm grateful for all the chances I had to interact with readers from all walks, in ways cordial and heated and funny and poignant. (Keep in mind I have no reason to suck up to you anymore. I'm leaving, remember?) I promised as a columnist to be honest, if not always right. Readers assumed the implied responsibility of letting me know when I was wrong. We both did our jobs.
Out of space, out of time. Which is fine, since all I have left to say is thanks. It's been a thrill. It's been important. It's been fun.
Most of all, it's been an honor.
Keep in touch. Just don't try to page me.
On Twitter: @MJMcGuire