It seems like only yesterday when I announced in this space that I was retiring — forced out of work after almost half a century in the news business.

An editor at my syndicate, Creators, had called me a couple of weeks ago and said "we are no longer going to be using your column."

Creators had columns that overlapped mine, particularly in the elderly health field. And the syndicate was doing a year-end review, trying to cut costs. It was just a few weeks before the Chicago Tribune plunged into bankruptcy and other superstar newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post had posted huge losses in revenue.

I figured I had become part of the story I had been covering these many years — working in a dying industry and being forced into retirement as an older worker.

But now comes the happy ending.

I have been hired back. The top editor rethought the decision. He read my farewell column and liked my conversational style.

"I hope I can talk you into coming back," he said. He could.

However, there is another element in this senior saga — an economic fact of life that many of us face. I was being hired back at substantially less than I was paid when I left two weeks earlier.

Many of you may have been confronted with something similar.

Here's the way I dealt with it; I would like to know what you would have done. I took the job over the strenuous objections of my wife, Kate.

She was outraged and urged me not to do it. She took it personally. The top editor told me he enjoyed my column: the conversational style and emphasis on writing instead of bullet points. So, Kate said, "What's going on here? He tells you that you are doing a fine job and then slashes your pay."

My daughter, Janet Rigaux, a job counselor in Kingston, N.Y., had a different perspective.

"These are difficult times," Janet reminded me. "I see a number of people every day with advanced degrees that are out of work. If you want to stay in the field, it is much better to have a job, rather than trying to re-enter from the outside. Maybe things will get better."

Maybe, but the newspaper business was suffering before the economy fell apart. The Internet is a huge threat.

Now I have a chance to explore other options. Perhaps I can talk the syndicate into helping me run a blog, or I can do a radio show or some video presentations. I guess what I have concluded is that I need to find new highways to tell my story.

I made a big mistake when I turned down a job offer from an infant radio network back in the 1970s. I was working at the New York Daily News and would have taken a big pay cut. And the network's financing was so chancy that I figured the operation could fold at any moment. Was I wrong!

That network is National Public Radio, which is doing quite nicely — if only I had taken a pay cut.

Well, I am not going to miss another opportunity this time, whatever it is. Maybe I can talk the NPR crowd into letting me broadcast a "senior moment" once in a while. I hope Nina Totenberg and Cokie Roberts haven't forgotten me after all these years.

E-mail Joe Volz at [email protected] or write to 2528 Five Shillings Rd, Frederick, MD 21701. To find out more about Joe Volz and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.