Last Days

Today is a hectic day. It's the last day I will be working at my job, and the last day that our office will be open at this location. We've got bins and boxes rivaling an airport security check line; opening a door is near impossible as is walking a straight line. The place is chaotic. While the change for me is not so signficant; for many of my co-workers who have spent ten or twenty years in this same office, today marks a huge transition. There's a distinct 'last-day-of-school' feeling floating throughout the whole building - and adding to this throwback feeling, a good old-fashioned pizza party! People you had previously acknowledged with a simple "Hello" are now sharing their histories and asking about your's. It always amazes me how these interactions tend to occur at the very last minute. Why does it take an ending to encourage these beginnings? Tired and trite as it sounds, there is really something to be said about treating each day as though it were your last. Who knows what kinds of relationships might be forged, what types of collaborations and ideas spurred...

The whole last-day syndrome also led me to recall a time in my life when I could not imagine a more terrible occurannce than an ending. Of anything! A tv show would air its finale and I'd be beside myself, the Spice Girls broke up and I composed a veritable thesis on my mourning. The last day of summer vacation was unbearable, as was the last day of school ironically. Basically, I never wanted anything to end. I was terrified of change, which was why the majority of high school was a pretty tough time for me. Obviously now, I can chalk up most of this to plain old growing pains - as much a part of childhood as Sesame Street bedsheets. But the funny thing was that I thought I would always have this painful aversion to change, that I would end up missing out on opportunities because I was too afraid of their inevitable end.

Now (thankfully), change is no longer the four-letter word I once imagined it to be. And indeed it has five. Now, I seek change. I welcome newness. Of experiences and people. Of places and events. And its not just because the new is inherently exciting and fresh - because sometimes its scary. Its not just because growth occurs in the situations most foreign to you - because you can also find ways to grow within the context of the familiar.

I guess I have learned to embrace change in the same way I've learned to embrace life - for all its fluctuations and circuitous movement. Nothing is static. There's both comfort and caution in the notion that what is here today may not be tomorrow. It is a relief to know that the bad will not stay forever, a harrowing reminder to enjoy the good that will eventually pass. Today, I walked home a little more slowly, looked at each person I passed longer, listened to the city's wild symphony more closely. Soon, it will have changed. I will have changed.

My new job begins on Tuesday: proof that our courses can change at a mile a minute. And for once, I'm loving every second.


P.S. How do you like the new space? For a girl with no clue about HTML/CSS/or whatever else you call it, it feels pretty good. Still working out some kinks, though. There is no fairy godmother of blogs, it seems.