Times, They Are a-Changing

Today was an emotionally draining day in one way, a heartwarming day in another way:

I went into the office to print out my resignation letter to my company, and to leave it with an HR colleague with whom I've been working for over a year, and who is helping me figure out which procedures to follow. When I'd put the signature on the first page, I told her that it felt very weird to end an era in my life that way — she said, yes, it was even weird for her and she hadn't been working alongside me nearly as many years as I've been with the company.

In the course of the day I met colleagues I hadn't seen in person in a while, we were happy to see each other, and I had a long conversation with a data science colleague.

In the evening, my US-based manager had scheduled a 'sync' meeting with my work team. The good news is that a colleague who switched away from our team is switching back again. I didn't know this before yesterday, and it was a great relief to have someone whom the team loves and trusts back again to support them — she looks happy with the change too!

But then I bluntly told the news that I was leaving the company. I went into detail about the extreme strain that leading a team in an ever-changing environment has put me under for the past few years, that the layoffs and company reorganization have made it significantly more stressful, and that I had reached an impasse to the point that I had decided in late January that staying was no longer possible.

My manager had emphasized before he scheduled the video call that my news would 'really devastate' the team. So I've been stewing in guilt that logically I know is undeserved, pretty much day and night. I was tremendously nervous about the call.

Since the call I've had a conversation with one teammate. The teammate I talked to told me that this was the most dramatic colleague news they'd had since early 2020, and that they realize now how much of the daily landscape I was without their realizing it, and how different it will become.

Brother Gi. reassured me that he's doing fine, although he was shocked (! he posted the relevant emojis, mostly for dramatic effect). This I had expected, and find reassuring.

The others are absorbing the information. I'd thought one or two might have expected this turn of events, but it turned out they didn't.

All of this is hard, and I've been moping. Conversations with the colleagues in other teams were also more subliminally awkward and sad because they often assumed we'd be having this or that interaction in a few weeks.

After I got home again, I listened to music, and more or less ended with "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"...