I like to read the New York Post. It’s a daily tabloid in New York City with great covers on the front and back and even great headlines which are humorous and often over-the-top in taste.

When I am in New York City I can’t wait to grab a copy. But most of the time I have to read it online.

Many of the stories they publish get my attention, but the other day one really caught my eye. A 23-year model, represented by one of the top agencies in the world, had not worked for four months and it brought her to tears. With her 24th birthday only a couple of months away she is fearful time may have run out on the career she started when she was 18.

She admits it might be hard for people to have any sympathy or empathy for her, but while I may not be beautiful, I understand fully the concept of time running out.

I turned 66 this year. Hitting 65 didn’t really have much of an impact on me because no one really noticed. I spent most of the day waiting to be dismissed from Saint Thomas -West Hospital in Nashville after spending a few days recovering from neurosurgery.

But I have had more time to ponder being 66. I wonder, probably more than I should, how many days the good Lord might have left for me. I also think back on the times I wasted.

I have truly come full circle. I am back at the Times-Gazette on a day-to-day basis after spending the last few years as a columnist and an occasional feature writer. This my fourth stop at the T-G dating back to my junior year in high school in 1973-74. I would later return to primarily cover city government and Tennessee Walking Horses. Even later I would sit in the editor’s chair in the 1990s.

As I am back in familiar territory, I think about what I want to do, and I try to calculate how much time I have to do those things.

I have been lucky through my parents, my own personal choices and a couple of my jobs to be able to travel a great deal at a young age. Many places I have

visited multiple times, but there are still places I want to return to and some I want to see for the first time.

I can never go to New York City, London England or Disneyworld enough at Christmas time. I want to go back to all three. As I have written before, there is nothing quite as relaxing as watching spring training baseball whether it be in Florida or Arizona.

One place I have wanted to visit since I read a book about it in high school is Morocco. If God lets me, I plan to take that off my bucket list.

There are two or three books I want to write. I have completed about five chapters in one. I am negotiating a deal to write one. And I have plans I can’t put off any longer, due to their advancing ages, to interview key people for a third one.

Retirement has never really been a priority for me. It’s great to be back at the T-G though I am sad at the circumstances that brought me here. The loss of David Melson is another example of how time catches up with us.

So much has changed in the newspaper business. To paraphrase actor Edmond O’Brien’s final line in “The Wild Bunch”, a Western about aging outlaws, “it ain’t like it used to be, but it will do.”