leading from the middle: “Nobody Writes to the Colonel” - Contemplating a Career’s End

摘要

My title comes from the name of a music club in Riga, Latvia.1 On first hearing the name in late 1999, it captured something of what I was feeling during my transitionfrom a full-time administrative position to semi-retirement.While “nobody writes to John” would be self-pitying hyperbole, there is an emotional aspect of stepping away from afull-time career after forty years. Now, past that initial separation anxiety, I find myself wondering about my career’send, even though I do not expect the curtain to go downanytime soon. In 2000 the Colonel and I were both “ebb’dmen,” as Shakespeare put it, but not exactly, because neither one of us seemed to be “dear’d by being lack’d.