A LIKELY STORY: GOODBYES ARE A DIFFICULT PART OF LIFE'S STRUGGLE

Saying goodbye is never easy, even for someone who writes for a living.

If life is a struggle, mine has always been to find the words.

Finding the words -- no matter how difficult -- is all in a day's work for a writer, and I'm not complaining. I love my job and have wanted to do this since I was a young child. In fact, I couldn't think of anything else I could do. (Could you see me with a hammer?)

When I was 10, I put together a newspaper at Washington Elementary and called it the Washington Post (ha-ha). It wasn't a newspaper per se, it was actually a collection of short stories, drawings and poetry I created with my friends.

We copied the loose-leaf pages and distributed it all over school. The first edition was the last. Not quite a prodigy, I suppose.

My writing grew more serious in high school when I wrote a fictional story of a boy who loses his innocence after his parents are divorced. In a college magazine I wrote about a man who, after walking in on his cheating wife, meets a bag lady with the one-word secret to life.

None of it was very good, if I am honest. It was contrived and melodramatic. No substance at all, really. But I had potential. And the writing seemed ... honest, somehow, no matter how bad it was.

When I got this job, writing became my work and one of my favorite sayings came true. "A man who loves his job will never work a day in his life."

The bulk of my work here involved reporting on crime in our fair city. I wrote about the seamy side of life. The first crime story I wrote involved a police officer talking a suicidal man from jumping off the Mississippi Bridge. I wrote about murderers, stealers, drug dealers, sex and suicide.

But my favorite thing to do was my columns. I remember working at the printing plant that put this newspaper together. During breaks I would read columns by Sam Blackwell and Ken Newton, thinking it would be cool to do what they did. I never imagined that I would one day do it, if not quite as eloquently.

I got to write about myself and what I wanted to talk about. It was never as interesting as the other stuff, but it was personal; and therapeutic, to an extent.

A year ago, I wrote in my first column for this newspaper that the first time you do something is always the hardest. I see now, as I struggle to find the final words in this space, that the last time you do something is pretty hard, too.

While finding the words is my job, finding the words to say goodbye isn't easy. Soon, I will begin work at a different newspaper in a different city. My friends and family are here. My job is here. Everything I've ever known is here.

I fight the nostalgia by reminding myself I'm moving less than a hundred miles north.

There are so many people who influenced and taught me personally and professionally, my father, Nolan Porterfield, Sam, Roy Keller, John. I have so many close friends that I am leaving behind, too. Mike, Don, and Dave.

I will miss them all desperately. But we are all connected, like words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs. And while a life of finding the words is sometimes a struggle, it is a life I wouldn't trade for anything. And so the struggle continues.

Thanks, and take care.

Scott Moyers is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.