I should warn you first of all that I am a recovering newspaper reporter. That means I blather on in print.

It also means I spent a substantial portion of my life in an industry that I knew was in deep trouble, dying in fact. My daily paper is now delivered to my doorstep folded in quarters, like a shopper. It is no longer thick enough to roll up.

I saw this coming quite a while ago — I had the good and bad fortune to work mostly at PM papers, which were much more fun and much more endangered than the AM variety. The writing was clearly on the wall.

So I bolted some years ago for the world of electronic media. I’ve been building and editing websites for 13 years now, which I guess makes me a pioneer of the genre.

For the last few years I worked at a large nonprofit organization, which was more like working at a for-profit company really. This was no leftie enclave. No derogatory pictures of W. scotch-taped to the office fridge, clean shirts with collars every day instead of leftie t-shirts, etc. No politics mentioned out loud at all, in fact.

From my cube I would watch balefully as newspapers continued to shrink, and many of my good friends faced bleaker and bleaker job propects. Poor bastards, I thought. At least I’m safe.

That ended this spring. Without a word of warning I got called down to HR and informed that my services no longer were required. The company tried its best to be nice about it, offering a decent severance package and as much advance warning as they could. But in the end my butt still landed on the street, my regular paycheck and health insurance gone.

It’s been a few weeks since my final exit. I still haven’t unpacked the suitcase full of stuff I removed from my cube during the Final Days. I’m running the want ads and the job boards and remembering all over again that the computer has changed, forever, the way we do stuff.

And I’m thinking hard about life, and what I want to do. One day in the middle of last week I took my kids fishing, and stood there in the perfect sunshine and listened to their squeals as the fish repeatedly stole their bait. And every now and then I’d turn around and look over at the tall buildings in the distance, and zero in on the one I spent four years of perfect summer days typing away in. The air smelled of the sea and I was so glad for the opportunity to just stand there in the sun and listen to my children laugh. Then we got ice cream. It was a fantastic day.

But since I’m not rich, I’m going to have to earn some money. Not sure how, or where. I guess it’s back to the job boards for now.