Welcome September! Cool breezes, pumpkin spice lattes, colorful leaves, fall festivals, and the harvest. Well, not this week as yet another oppressive heat wave has settled over this area. But make no mistake, summer’s days are numbered and pleasant autumn weather will soon show up and make everything better.

The changing season has me thinking about endings of other kinds…

I’ve been chewing on the idea of how best to bring my blogging efforts to a clean close. That question got sharper recently, because a friend had a stroke and is now relegated to a hospital room for who knows how long while his blog is abandoned with only the slim possibility he will ever get back to it.

I’d prefer not to just go missing if a similar fate would befall me. I could prepare a “farewell” letter and have my son post it for me after I’ve expired. That’s probably better than just going dark, but it’s still not clean. Shutting it all down and walking away while I’m still alive seems the best way to go.

Except I’m not ready to quit writing. Just yet.

Looking around at the stack of gear in the shack has me wondering the same thing about the hobby overall. My XYL will not be able to understand how to break all this down, and she won’t know where to even begin when it comes to selling it all. That means if I kick the bucket tonight one or more of my kids is going to have the weight of estate liquidation fall to them.

I can’t shake the notion that a decent person wouldn’t leave a task like this for their kids, but like with writing, I’m not ready to quit playing with radio.

I know there are companies that can handle such liquidations, but the kids would still have to find, vet, and deal with that company and that’s added friction. The best scenario might be to keep the gear until I’ve assumed room temperature and leave instructions for everything to then go straight to the dump. My present inventory is around $50k of radio gear and that would all be lost, however, that seems the easiest solution.

Besides, I’ll be dead and won’t feel that loss.