Life After Secretarial Support

      

 Someone once said, “There is nothing constant but change,” and they were on the money. 

To my way of thinking change comes in two sizes.  There are small changes that happen so gradually we don’t take much notice at the time.  A grey hair here and there…a small wrinkle that somehow found its way to your forehead and deepens slightly with every facial expression…grass slowly reclaiming the flower bed on the east side of the house….those things.   I call those “accumulating changes” because we don’t see them all at once. 

More jarring, or joyous, are the big changes that alter your life forever:  Marriage…the birth of a child…death of a parent….retirement.  I call those “bomb changes” because they hit one day, but have a ripple effect on the rest of your life.

I have experienced all of the ‘afore mentioned changes; celebrated some and endured others.   They’re all life changers, but the one that gives me the most trouble at this moment is retirement.

Yes, I retired from managing radio stations, and yes…I did go back to work six months later as editor of Heart of Ohio Magazine.  There are light years of difference in the two jobs…writing and editing is such a joy for me at this point in my life!  That is not to say I didn’t enjoy radio…I had over thirty terrific years in a great business.  But the biggest change for me has been the fact that I no longer have a secretary!

Managing stations in three counties I was fortunate enough to have the most efficient, intelligent and dependable people in each office who made up for all of my shortcomings.   My administrative assistant in Ashland, Tammy Pelton, could make a spread sheet sing as she filled them with figures and formulas.  She had a razor sharp memory for numbers, and without her the budgets for all the stations would have been a nightmare, if not impossible.  In Marion Amy Coder and Laurie Dutton could make anything happen, and in Mansfield Lynn Kiley knew where everything was or was supposed to be.  Nancy Brandt could wring any item needed for traffic or billing out of the proprietary software systems she had somehow conquered.

These women weren’t actually “secretaries”…they were the memory banks and human computer chips that made business life move along as I breezed in and out of the various stations.  One thing they all had in common, they knew I was helpless in the face of a fax machine, copier and the ever mysterious computer, and were kind enough to act as though it were a normal affliction.   At budget time I spit out numbers and Tammy put them into spread sheet order.  In every office there was at least one gal upon whom I depended heavily when my computer went berserk or the copy machine ran out of paper or I needed to know how much our electric bills were six years ago, on a Friday, before six o'clock.

Fast forward a few years.  I’m enjoying my version of retirement; working with a nice staff at the office and interviewing interesting people so I can write their stories for the growing number of readers of Heart of Ohio Magazine.   As I work on those stories I’m reminded that I can type, but do little else on this computer contraption.   I’m still trying to figure out how to change the spacing…and often I do things that cause my screen to change up its offerings.  I plunk around and sometimes get it back to “normal”; other times I simply have to work around what I’ve done.  Not so long ago I could have called out, “Tammy!” and she would have swept into my office to tap a few keys.  Everything would have gone back into its proper order on the backlit screen, waiting patiently for me to screw it up again.

Today, with no one specifically assigned to clean up after me, I have a printer that won’t print pictures from my laptop and a copy machine that spits things, unrelated to my needs, out of slots I didn’t even see before I pressed the buttons.  In addition there is a fax machine I won’t even begin to deal with.  I find this constant assault on my technical abilities (or lack thereof) to be tiring.  I’m certainly not in Kansas anymore.

Yes, I’ve had to adjust to life after secretarial support….and it’s not easy.  Retirement is definitely a life changing event, and so is a career change.  I am lucky to have worked with a wonderful group of gals who were not just talented staff, but friends as well.  Although we’ve gone our separate ways we still manage to get together once in a while for lunch or a drink and talk about the “old days”.  I just hope they all know how much I appreciate them…back then and now.

One thing all this change has taught me is to take life one day at a time; live in the moment.   If that moment happens to be trying to figure out how to get my original out of the bowels of the copy machine….so be it.

                                                                              Life is Good