Lady of Not-Anything-Even-Resembling Leisure

Friday was my last official day in my PR-office job, and I have to admit, it felt weird. Weird in one way--in the fact that I knew I would be back there Monday for most of the morning, and hence would be able to tie up loose ends. And weird in another way, too: going through drawers and drawers of files and remembering all those stories I wrote and the varying amounts of effort I put into them. Looking at letters from the medical school's previous dean, and remembering how he'd obsess about a particular topic, filling more than one folder to bursting with information for, drafts of and memos about a 500-word story for the weekly campus paper. Scientists with whom I had good working relationships who have since left the university; there were quite a number of those, actually, more than I had remembered. I felt oddly nostaligic, and yet there wasn't anyone around the office who would have known or remembered these stories, these incidents. That pretty much squelched the nostalgia right there.

At one point, I felt like I was starting to have a panic attack, which I thought was odd. But now that I look back at it, I realize that no, it was more of a simultaneous sense of loss and sadness: Loss of both friends and years, loss of enthusiasm and excitement in my work, loss of that feeling of making a difference. And sadness for all of that. Sadness for seven years' worth of files, most of which required effort to fill, but very few of which made any kind of real difference to anybody's life. That's sad, that I spent seven years not really making a difference. I like to think that those days are now at least partially over, that I'll be doing useful, fun work for the parenting website, stuff I'm really interested in. And the new job at the university, well, every time I write something that helps in fundraising, I'm helping the school, rather than writing articles to stroke scientists' egos and nothing more.

It's better. It's all a step forward. I'm excited about it. I can hardly believe that I've taken that step, that I've made the move. Me, the only girl in school who would cry on the last day of school, because I just hated change so much, hated goodbyes, hating moving on (or back or sideways). Of course, the fact that I was back there on Monday and have another meeting Thursday morning, not to mention my official "going away" party Thursday afternoon, helps. It's hard to miss anyone when you don't actually go anywhere.