Changing Jobs

So I'm leaving my job and heading for a new one.

Getting to this point has taken so much work, that it's only now (as I start writing up "everything I do" for my manager to make what I expect will be a futile attempt to get someone to do it in India, as goodbye parties are scheduled and people drop by to ask in hushed tones, "Are they hiring any other positions?", as I find myself doing monthly tasks and thinking, "This is the last time.") that I find myself gradually adjusting to the idea that in two more weeks I won't be here anymore.

Although I've changed roles a number of times, I've worked at the same company (mostly in the same building) for almost seven years now. At thirty-one, that's a rather major portion of one's life. When we moved out here and I started at the company, I was 24 and had two kids under two. A lot has changed since then.

At least in our modern world, a job is seen as a pretty transient thing. My employer could have told me I was out of a job at any time. Although the company tends to give a couple months' severance, that's not at all required. And similarly, while I've given them the traditional two weeks notice, in theory I could have simply said, "So long and thanks for all the fish," and walked out the door immediately.

And yet, for all that either could have, in theory, walked away with no notice at any time, in fact the bonds between employee and company run deep, perhaps oddly deep given that it is "only a job". Work friendships may not always be the deepest, but we spend far more time with co-workers than with most other friends. And even when a job seems three parts drudgery to one part interest, it becomes part of our daily mental landscape. The longest I'd worked at any one company prior to this was about three years, and even there I to this day remember a great deal about personalities, products, and daily routine. I have the feeling that this company has sunk even deeper into my consciousness.

As a result, the whole thing still has a certain air of unreality. It often throws me when large changes in life come quickly. Somehow, the fact that the offer of the new job came so quickly, a ten minute call outlining compensation, start date, etc., makes it seem much less real than the long process of talking to various employers, interviewing, etc. It probably won't be until several seeks into the new job that it finally sinks in that this really is where I work now.