So this is what it feels like

To leave a job of my own volition. It's been so long, I'd forgotten how otherworldly it feels. The tiptoeing around colleagues, everyone afraid to say something wrong. The rush to tie up a thousand and one loose ends, knowing it all won't get done, but also knowing it doesn't really matter because someone else will inevitably come along and do it, just as you did when you got here. The anticipation in the air. And at the end of the day will also inevitably come the anti-climactic last walk through the door.

I will miss this place. When I first came here, the assignment was for a few weeks or so. That was almost a year ago. I kept turning up for work, and they kept signing off on my timesheets. I jokingly told them I'd just keep showing up until they told me not to. They never did.

I owe the people here a lot. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would not have even gotten that job interview if I hadn't been here almost a year and had this experience on my resume. I also know that I never would have found an area of law that I actually like, that keeps me engaged and interested. No, it's not always the most challenging of jobs, sometimes it's downright boring to file pieces of paper with numbers labelled on them in numerical order. Or to pull certain of those pieces of paper, copy them, then re-file them. But it is always busy, there's always more to do, and it fulfills my need to organize things, to compartmentalize things in different ways.

This place also gave me back a large measure of self-confidence that I was sorely lacking after having been canned from 2 jobs in a row. It doesn't matter how much I hated those jobs, or how much I know I could have done the work better than anyone, the fact remains that I didn't do the work and that those places had every right to fire me. I was not in a good place in my head, in my life, and perhaps those things needed to happen for me to kick my ass into gear. This place helped me do that, and allowed me to slowly, bit by bit, task by task, reassert the overachiever that lives inside.

I wish that I could stay here, and so do they, but for right now, it isn't to be. There is too much uncertainty with too many cases to guarantee the volume right now, but the powers that be have told me that there is some dead weight that will be getting jettisoned in the near future and they would welcome me back at any time. So I'll keep my foot in the door here and see what happens down the road. For now, it's just nice to be leaving somewhere on a good note again.

And for the future, I'm nervous. For one thing, they expect me to be there at 9 am every day. Seriously. I mean, isn't there a law against cruel and inhumane treatment? It's going to be a steep learning curve, that's for sure. A whole new area of specialty, and a much faster docketing system. It's also a much smaller office, both in terms of space and people, and I'll be in a cube so hiding will not be an option.

Which might make posting a wee bit more difficult, since Millie appears to have died. Tech support couldn't get the upgrade to Win 2000 to install, and now she is stripped. I've ordered Win 98 SE to put back on her, I figured I could spare $50 just to try, but the jury is out on whether that will work or not.

Wait, STOP!! Don't jump off that bridge just yet! I'll be back as soon as I can, probably during lunch times, and I'll be getting a nice, new laptop with my first humongous paycheck.

And now I've got to go finish up the tidying up of loose ends before I get too emotional . . .