packed up

Tonight I stayed late at work to clean out my cubicle and respond to some last emails.  I had saved the original packaging from my BlackBerry, so I turned it off and closed it inside the box, the first I’ve been significantly separated from it in a year and a half.  Toward the end, I resented it so much, as it enabled my obsessive worry about the website and about my place in the company.

Slowly, I packed up the small things that together create an identity in a formless place: the magnetic poetry, the photographs, the books on XML and Unix and information architecture, the postcards, the sticky-notes, the notebooks filled with things I learned and will soon forget, the medicines and toothpaste and spare chopsticks, the battery-powered radio and librarian action figure and hand lotion and Dr. Seuss book translated into Latin and tiny treasures from coworkers’ vacations.

For eighteen months, I was myself in a context I was never certain of, which I struggled with most days.  I learned to adapt, to have confidence despite uncertainty, and to talk to people with whom I thought I had nothing in common.  The experience was beyond valuable: it was crucial.  And tomorrow I will wake up and go to work and live the very last day of that adventure, sad and relieved and ready.

About Halsted M. Bernard

Halsted, a/k/a cygnoir, does stuff with words. Her favourite things to do with words are keeping this diary, writing stories, and organising information. She lives in Edinburgh with her husband, two cats, a few gadgets, several fountain pens, and many books.

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