Knowing When (hint: Now) it's time to retire

First time I've ever retired...after five decades in journalism. Having never done so, I'm not so good at retiring. But 'it's time,' and I'm both eager and nervous about it.

This is a recent note I distributed to @ 300 of my “best friends” in the climate change field concerning my 12.31.22 retirement from Yale Climate Connections.

Dear colleagues: 

They say you know when "it's time." 

Well, for me, it's time.  Time to call an end to full-time employment and to my nearly 50-year career in journalism, the past three-plus decades focusing exclusively on climate change.

It's been a joy, in particular getting to know -- and appreciate and duly respect -- the individual scientists, journalists, policymakers, academics, and activists who have dedicated their careers and their own lives to this critical issue. I've been so fortunate to have been able to work with and around such individuals and organizations.  I'm forever grateful.

You can take the person out of the job...but you can't remove the things that made that job not "work" but passion and commitment. So be it with me, and I'll look forward to keeping my oar in the climate change waters well beyond my W2 days. 

Thanks to each of you for helping make my career so personally rewarding to me. And for continuing to make such incalculably valuable contributions to addressing the climate challenges we -- all the world's now 8-billion people and other living things -- will long continue to confront.

I do hope our paths will cross, if only virtually in many cases.

Keep up your good and important work.

Thanks.  Bud Ward