A Sad Retreat

This is my last week at this job. I am leaving for two months and maybe – forever.

Looking back, this job came along in a perfect time: I was tired of bureaucracy, I wanted to get back into the field, hubby had lost his job and my salary kept us afloat. I’ve had opportunity to return to my profession, practice my craft – I appreciate it.

I liked working with a team of my friends and I will miss it very much. 

Still, I think it is time for me to move on, to look for new opportunities and to develop new skills necessary for my career.

Both strength and weakness of small organization is that it is like a family. The strength is that family supports you, understands you, lets you go to the medical appointments, gives you days off, and treats you to family dinners. However, the stress of having a personal conflict with family members transcends just the family setting.  You have hard time distancing from it and you take many things personally. You take work home and carry it on you. After a year of being so closely intertwined in personal and business issues, I would like to leave work at work.

Strange cataclysms are happening around me simultaneously. Here I am sorting issues at work and boom, my grandmother (dying of cancer) gets significantly worse. So, I have to leave everything and hurry to Denver to support my real family, watch my grandmother doze off on morphine and stay close to my mother. My uterus keeps resisting our attempts to domesticate it, make it ready for the baby, so tired of all this bullshit, I am just going for the In Vitro fertilization in January. Additionally, I have a second job and other responsibilities, meaning that I have no free weekend, literally, no free weekend till December 23d. I am traveling to the regions and giving trainings on weekends. Every Thursday I pack and every Monday I unpack. I don’t remember the last time I woke up on my own, without an alarm.

Thus, as sad as I am to leave mostly comfortable job, with an OK pay and wonderful coworkers, I need to cast off at least one source of stress in my life.  These are my four last days here. I feel melancholy. I feel relieved. I feel confused. I am bothered by the thought of job-seeking, again. Though mostly, I feel like I escaped the storm and I am ready to clean up the ruins in peace and quiet.

Hey Denver, this is my sad retreat. I am flying to you, too soon, this time

The pic: part of my job involves working with special needs kids. I will miss it.