The End (of Work)

The end is never as you’d expect it. Graduation and last day at work, you would think these occasions would be filled with an overwhelming sense of liberation, yet there’s always a little sadness. Maybe it’s because I like to be sad, but I think if you weren’t a little sad then something is amiss. Perhaps you were never happy there, you failed to make connections, or the people there were not memorable; none of the above were the case for me, that made it difficult to say good-bye.

One of my favorite colleagues was messaging me up to when I shut off my computer. He is in another building, but we’ve bonded over an arduous project in the past. He said to take two minutes before I leave and think back to the past three years but only of the good memories and walk out the door with them. And as we winded down our conversation, he said he was going to say what he would say to me on any other day, and that was “have a good night.” While his advice of leaving with the good was well intended, it saddened me because I still could not justify leaving a great network of colleagues in pursuit of the unknown. Will I find replacements for my regular lunch buddy, happy hour crew, and the midnight oil burners? Shutting down my computer for the last time made me feel like pulling the plug on a terminally ill loved one.

As I realize my day-to-day routine is about to be drastically different from the last 10% of my life span, I wonder how I will cope. My heart knows I have to do this, but it is my mind that is having difficulties rationalizing the pros of the decision because all I see are obstacles and things I rather not deal with. Somehow I expected it to be the opposite with my mind made up but my heartstrings tugged in the opposite direction.