It must be chromosomal. How else to explain why so many of us lean on pop culture references to put significant moments in our lives into context? As I limp toward the last hours of my final day at TEXAS MONTHLY after more than seventeen years as an editor and the editor (and also the day that, not incidentally, the magazine’s staff is moving from the downtown offices we’ve occupied since 1989 into sparky new space just west of UT), I can’t help thinking: This is the end of a long-running TV series. The only question is which iconic final scene awaits me. Will the image of my exit abruptly and irritatingly switch to a black screen, cutting off Journey in mid-lyric? Will it mysteriously start to snow in mid-summer, only to reveal, when the camera pulls back, that we’re in a snow globe being shaken by a developmentally challenged kid (say, Spong) who imagined the whole thing? Will I drive home tearily envisioning the circumstances in which every staff member bites it (Burka asleep in a chair in Senate, pen and pad fall from his hands, slumps over, screen goes white, flashes “Paul Joel Burka” and his date of birth and death)? Will I roll over in bed tomorrow morning next to Suzanne Pleshette?

It’s too easy to overthink one’s passage into the next phase of life, so I’ll simply retweet @LouGehrig: Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I’ve spent nearly all of my career and nearly half of my years in the employ of the world’s greatest magazine — haters, cop a walk — and I wouldn’t trade a minute of it. I’ve grown up here in every conceivable way one can grow up, and I leave with enormous pride in what we accomplished together. My fellow all-hands-on-deckers — writers and editors and designers and copy-editors and fact-checkers — are the ones who deserve the credit for creating and sustaining this extraordinary publication over time, as do the ad salespeople and marketers and circulation whizzes and whip-smart accountants and production geniuses and custom publishing pioneers and new media visionaries who provided us the resources and wherewithal to do our best work. Going forward, I have absolutely no doubt that our editor, Jake Silverstein, and our president, Elynn Russell, will lead TEXAS MONTHLY to new heights, confounding the dim bulbs out there who fantasize about the demise of print journalism.

Although I’ll be starting a new job on Monday as CEO and editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, non-partisan public media organization, I’ll stay connected to these fine folks and this extraordinary magazine in many ways. I’ll be consulting for them on an as-needed basis for the next couple of years — hey, how about another Astronaut Sex cover! — and I’ll continue to host TEXAS MONTHLY TALKS as editor emeritus. Most important, because I know objectively that TEXAS MONTHLY is great and will soon be even greater, I’ve signed up as a subscriber. If you’re not one already, I hope you’ll do the same.

To all of you out there who I’ve met over time, who’ve emailed and called, who’ve commented kindly or obnoxiously on this blog or in a gut-bomb letter to the editor; to all of you who’ve welcomed the magazine or the TV show into your homes; to all of you who’ve put Texas first in your lives, as we here have every month and every week and every day: Thanks. I’ll miss you. Happy tr