Strongly Worded

Forget you know my number, in fact, forget you know my name

So the soul sucking is over. Friday was my last day at my job. I cleaned out the desk, removed all the stealth job search documents from the computer, and deleted all the cookies from the web applications. I deleted all my sent mail, paying extra attention to the whiny despairing messages that conveyed my hatred of my job. Then I wrote and printed a 9-page (single spaced) "transition memo" for my successor.

I removed all traces of myself. If you call the office, you'll be prompted to press 4 for Jennifer, the new executive director. If you email me , you'll get an automated response that says "Thank you so much for your message. Dori has left the Organization. Please contact Jennifer at jen@organization.org."

If you have a terrible problem, and are facing imminent homelessness, you should talk to Jennifer. If you're upset because you don't qualify for a complicated government program, Jennifer can address your concerns. I'm sure she'd also like to meet with you if you're debating whether to participate in said program, and want to talk at length about the pros and cons and all the implications it would have on your life, your financial future, and the emotional well-being of your pet. Also if you're itching to do long-term community planning, and want to pore over maps and zoning documents, Jennifer's your woman. If you want to have a meeting at 9 p.m. or on a Saturday, Jennifer will be there for you. And finally, if you want to hang out in a basement office in which the windows don't open and the bathroom walls are so thin that you can hear people peeing, then you should absolutely stop by and say hi.

I won't be there, of course, because as Carrie Bradshaw said to the dysfunctional Mr. Big, just before she took off for a stint in romantic Paris with her romantic artist love interest, "you can drive up and down this street all you want, because I don't live [OK, work] here anymore."

Obviously, the parallel stops there, because unlike Carrie, there is no way I am ever going back to that place. Leaving was a bizarre and surreal process, and I got a lot of love from co-workers and constituents, and that made me feel really good. I'm just now accepting that I no longer have a place to go every day; I no longer have a business card and title; and perhaps most importantly, I no longer have a paycheck. Today is my first day of freedom and even though I have a ton of stuff to do with my class, and my contract project, and my newly recharged job search, it is fucking strange to be sitting in my home office, listening to my neighbors yell at each other through the open window, and knowing that this multi-faceted freedom will be my life for a while.

Posted by Dori at 11:38 AM