Clearing out

I am too tired to do much that is productive today. I did stay up too late last night with the iPad.  It seems that I have become a night person.  But my schedule requires that I also be a morning person, and the two conflict.

So here I am at work in my partially cleared out office.  I have cleaned out the file cabinet in the photo above and most of the things in the book case are packed.  I have a couple more file cabinets to go through and then a bunch of publications of mine that I will donate to the library since I don't need 40 copies of each of them.

Strangely enough, I am now over the shock and despair part of grieving the end of my career here.  I think that a couple of months ago I was really in the throes of grieving my leaving this position.  I knew that I had signed on the dotted line five years ago and wasn't a bit under duress or crazy when I did it.  Both C. and I decided that we would leave when we were young enough to still do other things.  Our stint here has been long and productive. We knew that we would be ready in five years.  And the financial deal was really sweet.

But as the time grew nearer I did grieve. I did the denial (I still have plenty of time left to work here), anger (what was I thinking?), the bargaining (I can come back and work again for the agency at some point), and the depression (no one will miss me) bit.  Sometimes I felt near panic at the thought of leaving this career. 

I have worked at some sort of job in marine science since I was in high school.  That's a long time.  I even volunteered at my first job at a marine lab where I later got my MS and Ph.D. I spent that entire summer emptying out dead preserved oysters and washing the jars. I saw shriveled up oysters in my dreams.  But I showed up every day and did the work.  That lead to paying summer jobs for the rest of high school through college.  And then came graduate school where there were no breaks or vacations. And after graduate school, I went right into moving and working here.  It was a long run.

Now I think that I 'm at the acceptance phase.  I realize that I will see the people here again.  I do have outside interests that will keep me busy.  I am wanting the days now to go quicker so that I can be through with all the finality.  I am ready to accept the new reality of not being a part of this place in the sense that I have in the past. 

So today is a day to go through more drawers of the last file cabinet.  And now I am viewing these old letters and papers as being expendable.  I don't have to keep everything. Those old files that go back to the start of my time here can be perused.  I can let go of them and only save a very few that mean something to me.  It's time to say the good byes and move on.