Keep Going
If you are tired, keep going;
If you are scared, keep going;
If you are hungry, keep going;
If you want to taste freedom, keep going.
Did Harriet Tubman really say that? I have no idea. Did anyone notice what my T-shirt said? I have no idea, but I liked knowing.
First I had to unload the car; when I got home Thursday night, I had to get set up for my seminary class and then go to class, and after class, it was too late. I unloaded the car, and my spouse and I headed to campus in separate cars.
We packed up one car, and he headed back to the condo we're renting. I packed up the rest of my office and put the boxes in the car. It was strange, and I realized I've never packed an office in these circumstances. Usually I've been leaving because of my own choice, so I felt it was important to leave things in order for those who came after me. In my last job, I even went so far as to digitize the departmental files for the person who came after me.
With this severance, I wasn't able to access my electronic files, so even if I wanted to be helpful that way, I couldn't be. I took my personal items out of desk drawers and file cabinets, but whoever comes after me still has a lot of cleaning to do. Some of those files and piles of paper were there when I joined the college in 2016. And now the filing cabinet of doom will be someone else's task.
I left all sorts of holiday decorations that I don't want. I left books. I left box after box of masks, gloves, and other supplies. In the past year, I got several microgrants from Thrivent to buy food for students, and I left that too.
I put the last 5 boxes of stuff in my car, left the office keys and fob on the desk, and drove away. I got home, unloaded the car, and drove to Total Wine to stock up. The traffic was terrible, and I reflected that now I can run errands at whatever time is most convenient for me.
That's the strangest part of this severance. When I was laid off in 2012, it was because of a restructuring, and I had a good chance at securing a similar position in the new structure. So I kept going to work, doing my best, so that I would be chosen (and I was chosen, much to my relief). When I left my job in 1998, it was to move to South Florida, and I had the summer to decide if we would stay or if we would go back to South Carolina to my job there--it was a teaching job where I could take summers off, which I did, so I immediately started working on finding permanent work.
In my current situation, I spent much of 2021 thinking I would lose my job, so I/we made decisions to get ourselves into position to weather that storm. And when it looked like I wouldn't lose the job, we had already put processes into place--we had rented the condo, put a lot of money down, and decided to sell the house. We decided to continue with our plan to sell the house because of the burning hot real estate market down here; if one sees one's house as an investment and one lives at the coast, one must sell when it's time. It was time.
I spent much of the day realizing that I don't have to go to work on Monday. I will still have online classes to teach and seminary work to do--but not having to be in an office for 45-55 hours a week will free up so much time. And I won't be commuting twenty minutes to half an hour each way. And I don't have to be desperate to find another full-time job; my plan is to go to seminary in the fall and live in campus housing.
I have never left a job and had that kind of time open up. Yesterday, I thought of all the ways I could start to fill that time, and I instantly thought/prayed, let me not screw this up.
Yes, let me not screw this up.
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