Last Day

To me, last days kind of suck. You expend so much energy looking for a job, interviewing for a job, preparing for leaving, and being ecstatic about moving on that you forget until the very end around 4:30 pm when people start wishing you good luck and saying good bye that you are essentially leaving a bunch of semi-good to very good friends behind. Some you might talk to occasionally in the future, most you'll probably never see or hear from again. It seems to be a little worse this time around because I don't know anybody in this area besides the people I've worked with. Now, I have to essentially start over.

It usually takes me at least 6 months to feel comfortable with a bunch of people, and that is the part that I am not looking forward to in my new job. Am I nervous, scared, anxious? No. Well, not about the job, only about making a jackass of myself. That's why, unlike some people, I tend be really reserved for a long time.

Part of my Autumn Resolution this year, and I've stuck to it pretty well, was to get better at maintaining contact with past friends, acquaintances, and coworkers. So I made sure to give at least a half a dozen people my personal email address and resolved to email each of them at least every month. Even if they don't reply. Like one of my old bosses that I contacted a month ago. If you are reading this...you know who you are.

I worked hard for these people and surprisingly I think they appreciated it. I got five cards, one tin of the most amazing cookies that you have ever eaten in your life, craisin white chocolate oatmeal cookies, a 12 pack of Pilsner Urquell, a cake, a $50 gift certificate to Walmart, a coffee mug, 2 free personal days that I will get paid for, and last but not least a big hug from my boss who used to scare the daylights out of me, all 99 lbs 60 inches of her, not but 2 months ago, until I realized she was getting screwed by the merger just as bad as everyone else and cared about her employees more than any boss I have ever had before.

One thing I will miss: Being important. Being The Guy for about a hundred people does kind of feed the ego. But I won't miss being The Guy because I could never ever concentrate on one task and complete it to the level that I desired because somebody was always pulling me in another direction.

A short list of things I won't miss: Visual Basic 6, Belligerent A-hole, screen scraping terminal screens, getting abused by IT.

Anyway, I am really glad to be moving on, I just hope a couple of the friends I made "stick".