As long as I can remember, my life has been governed by a weekly cadence. The school week, the weekend. The work week, the weekend. Even early in my career when I’d sometimes work a Saturday shift in exchange for another day off, there was still some sort of weekly cycle governing my free time.
That’s about to end.
Yesterday was the final Monday I’ll have returned to a full-time job after a weekend off. Monday? Friday? After this week, will it matter? The concept of all seven days being roughly similar seems so incredibly odd. I’ll find out soon enough how that actually plays out.
It’s been tough for me to fully grasp that I’m finishing up my salaried professional career very soon, in part because I remain very busy at work (as I wrote about earlier). But a couple of things started driving the point home yesterday.
1) We had my first of what my boss is calling “Sharon’s final hours” meetings (a phrase which looks kind of alarming every time I see it in my Outlook calendar).
We didn’t only talk about who’s going to handle recent requests I won’t have time for, which isn’t that different from figuring out vacation coverage. We also discussed who’s going to take over some of my favorite long-time projects – and which of my favorite creations will get the axe. As is often the case when a long-time employee leaves, priorities and skill sets will likely shift on my team when a replacement comes on board.
I’m very proud of some of the applications I’ve built. I enjoyed working on them, and it was satisfying to help make some people’s work lives easier while also having some fun coding in R. Now, either those apps will be overseen by someone else or they’ll be gone. Ouch.
2) I had my “exit interview” today, where HR asks you about your experiences at the company. Being asked for those opinions wasn’t especially new, since the company regularly conducts employee surveys. Plus, I’ve been a speaker at several internal career events for new employees. What was new was the nuts-and-bolts discussion about things like where to give back my company laptop, when my work email will be turned off, and how to set up my auto-response for after I leave the company. . . . All with no new job or professional title or work email on the horizon.
It is indeed getting real. My “termination day” is this Friday, but Thursday and Friday are leftover vacation days. My final real day of work is . . . tomorrow.
You can follow My Next Chapter by email newsletter or RSS feed. Blog content © Sharon Machlis.