#64: Goodbye, job.
Transitions are hard, even when they are good.
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Writing and reflecting happen on the far side of change, once we’ve rowed across the choppy lake and are putting bandaids on our blisters and Ben Gay on our backs. Not during. Not in the messy middle. Which is exactly where I am right now, making a giant life change.
Last Friday was my last day at V2X. My last day of “working for the man” for the foreseeable future.
I’m mid-leap. Mid-chasm! I’m confident I’ll make it to the other side. Maybe the landing will be wobbly, maybe I’ll pitch forward slightly onto one knee and scrape my palms from bracing my fall. But I know, just a moment later, I’ll launch forward with adrenaline and purpose to build my next stage of life. I look longingly towards that day. I know from experience it is out there, on the horizon. But it’s not here yet.
I’ve lovingly dubbed this week — the week I’m giving myself to slosh around the messy middle without worrying about direction, momentum, schedules — as “Flail Week”.
Because I can’t possibly be expected to organize my thoughts during Flail week, I’m just going to share some feelings and stories from my last week of work. It may feel a little disjointed — just like life sometimes. Bear with me. I know I can count on you.
Feelings
Face-breaking smiles one second, when a kind word is shared about my personal impact in someone’s life. Followed immediately by buckets of tears, when a kind word is shared about my personal impact in someone’s life.
Sheesh. I’m running up and down the scales of the human experience, between curious, joyful, scared, disgusted (mostly with myself), and full of love. It’s exhausting.
You know this kind of emotion, when it feels like your guts are being carved out by some curvy knife used in Japanese samurai movies. I’m giving myself permission to feel it. But I don’t love the feelings one bit. Yes, yes, I am always telling you that feeling my emotions allowed me to process my past losses. But that does not mean I’m like, “Oh, sudden overwhelming sorrow, so glad you are here! We love having you! Crying in front of strangers is so much fun!”
Dear lord, no. But we are draconian about going ‘through’ feelings, not ‘around’. So emotions, you get to stay as long as you wish. Damn you. Thank you.
Identity
My last day was filled with “how are you doing?” and “we will miss you’’ and “I know this must be hard for you” and “you crushed it here, you made us feel seen.” Topped with a big ol’ helping of “you’ve got this! We are cheering you on for your next adventure!”
Coworkers, you think I gave you something… but you helped a widow form a new identity. And that identity does not disappear, because human connection does not disappear. The fossil record of your impact on me lives deep in my bones.
My friend Karl’s ‘song of the week’ popped into my email as I was fielding some of these notes. Boston: Don’t Look Back. “Did he send that song for me?” I wondered…
His text arrived not two minutes later. “I just sent out the song of the day. Specially for you.”
Energy
We can look at our future when it is uncertain and unknown and simultaneously be excited and scared.
We have to leave room for both. We have to be looking at the horizon and say “well, hell, I’ve looked into the future before and haven’t had a clue what would happen, and I survived and thrived. I’ll do it again. I haven’t the foggiest idea how. But I’m up for the challenge.”
Change — chosen or unchosen — is an act of creation… in which you must participate fully.
Even if that means just hanging on by your fingernails. When things change, energy is released, new things are built. Volcanos erupt, spewing their magma that becomes new land, rich with the nutrients of where it came from. New soil to plant the idea of our new self, our evolution, our embodying of our next season.
But we can’t sit around saying, “But I liked it better befoooooore! I don’t like this new land, new soil, new configuration! Make it stop.”
We have to embrace that energy. We have to let the energy move us toward whatever comes next. The ashes of ‘what was’ become raw material for us to create something even more exquisite.
Courage
After a particularly hard final work call, I hung up and burst into tears. Apparently the jumping jacks I had done before the call, attempting to clear my body of some of the pent-up uncertainty, hadn’t finished the job.
Interrupting my sobs, my computer started chiming. My good work friend Bill, a pal who I’d known since my very first work trip to Kuwait in 2017, was reaching out. I looked at the Teams call, blinked, and against all my hunker-down, “we are all alone in this world” instincts, I punched the green telephone button.
His calm face filled the screen. I couldn’t pull myself together, so I just kept on crying. He sat there and watched. “It’s hard,” I said. “I know,” he said. And he just listened.
So many of us — the person typing this included — have courage when it’s convenient. A waffley, on occasion, at-our-discretion kind of courage. But Bill sat and watched his friend process something hard for her. He accompanied me (via Teams for god’s sake!) till I wore myself out. He didn’t let me go until I found peace, and he knew I would be okay.
Change
Rummaging through the photo section on my iPhone (how is it somehow so complicated to anyone older than millennial??), I found pics from my first overseas business trip at V2X. Spain, Turkey, Kuwait, May 2017.
I don’t know who the hell was taking those pictures, but there is not a single human being in them. A few camels. Chain link fence. Palm trees. My seat on the airplane?
Fast forward to the photo record of my trips in the past few years and there are people, people, more people. Because people have become the heart and soul of what I do.
We don’t often get a chance to see photographic evidence of our hearts changing, our minds expanding, our values being ripped down so that something better could be built there, like my Treehouse on a beautiful piece of land. But there it is, in my freaking phone. The evidence of my transformation.
Whereas 2017 Sue believed that she was in it alone, 2024 Sue believes in nothing more than people.
I was just scared before.
But the people that filled my last seven years showed me I had nothing to be afraid of. And in the wise words of the Village People in Y.M.C.A, “No man, does it all by himself.” I finally figured that out. No costumes required.
I am joyfully, curiously, anxiously leaving the ‘known’ behind. That known being almost seven years at V2X… but also 33 years of being a corporate wonk (minus 16 weeks of maternity leave and two years of grad school). Round it up to a solid three decades of building a career, honing a craft, making lifelong friends (and enemies!). Failing, succeeding, learning, teaching. Providing for my family, creating an identity.
Although I am moving forward with verve and vigor, I haven’t got the faintest clue what is next. None. I know what I want to happen, what I aspire to. But the path I’m now traveling on isn’t a path anymore… At least I have the compass of my purpose to keep me oriented while I wander around in the dark!
In other words, I’m suddenly living in a keen combination of certainty and anxiety. But I’m not doing it alone. I feel safe to explore the darkness of the future, knowing I have a massive, love-woven, courageous community to lean on whenever I’m feeling lost.
And that makes me feel more alive than I ever have before.
Thank you, thank you, thank you,
Happy Flail Week! 🥳 I have a sneaking suspicion that the pathless path you're traveling is going to take you to some amazing, surprising places. Congratulations on the big leap!
Congratulations, Sue! I'm excited to see the next chapter unfold for you! xo