d-3
Tuesday, September 25th, 2007
I’ve been working here for fourteen years.
It ends on Friday. I had thought that, by now, I’d be a gibbering wreck, but i’m not. I’m stangely calm.
I’ve had almost five weeks to accept that I’m leaving - hell, I chose to leave. And I started off doing the whole ‘end of an era’ thing until Uncle Bob pointed out that it might be a little more useful to think of it as the start of the next era.
So I did, but that didn’t help me get through the sadness at what I felt was two-thirds of my working life ending with a whimper instead of a fireworks bang.
But the sadness fades, and I’m left now with a feeling that there are a couple of people here I’m really quite fond of, and a whole lot more who have come to mean, really, very little to me; the company ceased to have any value to me (other than the obvious financial one) quite some time ago, and, all in all, I’m not really going to miss it that much.
All of which has been a sort of epiphany for me. See, I never had many friends as a kid (start the violins), no, reall. But you already knew that, I’m sure. Then, of course, I emigrated to London (bring the fiddles up, andante with the cello), and so, where most people have friends from, say, school or their old neighbourhoods, I had … nobody (lay the syrupy strings on with a trowel, please).
So my work took ever more important a place in my life. It was where I made my friends, where I developed my social life. Aside from D and my Family in the UK, work was all I had (wheel in the entire string sections of as many orchestras as you can find).
But you know what? I’ve just realised that - somewhere in the past three or four (or maybe five) years - that’s changed. It’s over. I have friends that I know through other things. I don’t rely on my job to provide me anything other than what a job should be providing - money, intellectual stimulation, a friendly crowd to work with, but NOT a group of people whom you can’t bear to be parted from.
It’s making leaving a little easier.
Just a little, mind. This big ole ‘mo will still have some tears before Friday, count on it.
