Shhhhhhhhh…come here. Let’s have a nice, quiet conversation, shall we? You know – just you and me all nice and intimate because we’re friends. I want to let you in on a little secret: Today is my last day of work. No, no, silly. That isn’t the secret. The secret is that while I’m here at my last day finishing the cleaning of my desk and saying my farewells a little part of me inside feels like it just died.

Don’t get me wrong. I want and really need to leave this place that I’ve been at for just slightly over four years. You can read simplified reasons why in one of my earlier posts. No, one of the things that makes me feel really bad about leaving is that I’ve forged so many good friendships and acquaintences over the years and I’ve become a very well known person throughout the agency I worked with. There are so many people that I’ve come in contact with on a regular basis that, for all intents and purposes, I’m probably not going to see again. That’s what makes leaving such a trying and emotional experience for me. A good number of these people I’ve stood up for and fought for them when they needed something or someone. Others I’ve had the joy of getting to know better and have established relationships outside work. I literally feel like I have given so much of myself to this place in order to care for my staff, my contract and my client. I know you’ll tell me then that it is my fault for getting so involved. I just can’t help it – I really do care.

I look back on the experience I’ve had at this job and I realize that I’ve done what I always do: I try to bend the environment to my liking. And for me, that means establishing a nice, little community where people want to come to work or use work not only as a means to collect a pay check but also as a social haven. Face it, sometimes we spend more time with our co-workers than we do with our families. And as such, at least for me, I created an environment that had a very familial feel to it, whether it be with the people on my contract, with people on another contract or with our clients. Almost everywhere I would go I would have the joy of talking to people and getting to laugh and smile with them. I truly liked them and I can only hope that the feeling was reciprocated. Talking to a friend via AIM last night I realized that some of these people dear to me wouldn’t be here today and that I had missed personally saying my farewells to them. It makes me feel empty. Such is the price of getting so entwined in other people’s lives. The funny thing is that Angela will tell you that these feelings I have are genuine. Repeat after me: I really do care about the people I worked with.

So this is it. I’m going to sorely miss these friends and colleagues and, because of how I tackle work, I am going to feel like a small part of me will be gone. But what can you do? It is time to move on.

I suppose I’ll just have to try and get myself out of this funk by looking at bunnies…