The Sunday before the Monday of my last work week...

Actually ended up at this park today in Bartlett - had been looking for a picture for my Examiner.com article and ended up taking this photo on my Blackberry phone while my husband and I sat in the car and ate Dairy Queen.

I'm not supposed to be eating Dairy Queen; this also should not have been my third visit in as many days. As it happens, I am even allergic to ice cream and all things dairy, and there are consquences of an ugly nature that shall not be detailed here. The sad fact of the matter is I've been pretty stressed out, and while the ice cream doesn't really help, it seems to be my go-to (bad Julie) in times of relative emotional chaos.

This is the last Sunday before the Monday of the last week of the job I have held for 3 years. I feel a bit awful about it: while I am grateful my company gave me a head's up that their organizational changes were going to leave me out of a local role (I could keep my job if I had been willing to re-locate myself to Dallas) it has been in some ways like a month-long wake. I have felt for the past 20-odd days like I am dealing with an imminent death in the family, and getting up and going to the office, regardless of my gratitude for the paycheck, has been a little rough. To add to it, until Friday none of my internal customers knew I was leaving, and I've had to really try hard to be as professional as ever in the best interests of everyone concerned and for the safety and security of my severance package.

I've read in a million places that the workplace is no place for tears: there is truth in that. No one respects them for the most part - emotions are not supposed to be part of the corporate landscape. Even when life hands you some very odd twist, it is critical that you not let your fear or anxiety show. I'm naturally pretty emotional, but have earned over the last few years especially that for your job you need to learn the discipline of keeping the personal segregated from the career side of the house. The cumulative effect leaves you sometimes feeling a little schizophrenic.

In any case, I guess I can say here at least that I feel a bit like I'm attending my own wake - and that I'm the only guest continually showing. And that's okay. Even though I know that some of the managers I support are probably sad to see me go, at the end of the day the business continues and you do what you need to do in order to adapt and flex with those business needs. They will continue to move on about the business of being part of a global company, and I will simply...move on.

The positive side of this story I guess is that as an odd happenstance, it's gotten me writing again. My little side line of an article on the Examiner; my forays onto Twitter: change is once again forcing me to grow and expand and learn, and maybe that's not all bad.

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