September 13th, 2006

Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.
-Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

Geez, he says that like it's a bad thing.

(Not like I'm trying to hint at anything.)

I subscribe to a daily email called "A Word a Day" and it is exactly that: A new word each day emailed to my inbox with an explanation, a pronunciation guide, and the word used in context. For example, today's word is "skosh" which according to the writer of the daily email, Anu Garg, is a tiny bit ... a mote ... a tad ... a drop ... a dollop, perhaps. (One wonders why there are so many words for a small amount.)

Anyhow, the "A Word a Day" email also comes with a quotation, the above one which I borrowed.

* * *

I've been having trouble deciding just how unattached / still-attached I am to my last workplace. It seems silly, since it's been 8 months since I was employed there. But I did a very short two-hour instructional session contract with them a couple of months ago, and I continue to see the employees (who, unlike me and others, are still there) for lunches, for coffee ... and even sometimes passing by the interview rooms of my current company! :) (And for a small monthly fee that information can remain secret ... okay, just kidding: I know I have a skeleton or two in my closet as well.)

I guess the problem I have with this is that I am not sure whether or not I am "letting go". Surely, at some point, I should be able to wake up one morning and realise that I haven't talked to anyone from that last place for longer than I can remember: A coon's age, so to speak. But right now, not a week goes by without my interest in that company's business being peaked or somehow massaged by a stray comment, something I read, or by my deliberately spelunking their porus website system to glean what I can from their marketing detritus.

You see? I am still attached to the company and especially with the majority of the people that I worked with there. I really liked most of them, and would hate to think that I have to go into exile from them. I mean, some people there drove me batty beyond belief, and they formed the primary part of why I left, but they were in the minority number-wise (though I just had to get away before I went insane).

But now I'm gone I'm finding an uncertainty in myself about how "let go" that last place really is. The fact that I occasionally get emails asking me about how something works in the help compilation system, and also that I work two blocks away and am pretty frequently bumping into said co-workers makes the musings more difficult to resolve. If we were in completely different parts of the city, would I still be such a hanger on?

And, finally, what does it matter? I got good at what I did there, and can justifiably be proud of shaping that process with my own fair hands, sometimes learning as I went. And though my replacement is busy in the throes of changing and reworking much of what evolved under my watch (and good on him, I hope he meets with great success: I don't care what he does with it now ... it's not my baby anymore) I still glow with pride at the thought that I achieved something in a production environment (repurposable, reused, XML-based documentation with a one-button help build process) that the product management buffoons around me kept fumbling towards for years. I made a solution to satisfy my doc needs before the "planners" and "visionaries" had even started to think about the problem itself. And the only frustrating thing is that they couldn't afford to notice I'd already solved their problems, because it would have made them look pretty useless ... but even that makes me sometimes pine for the days when it was all still my purview ... I think.

The truth is, I was glad to leave when I did and I was glad to have my own business start up and I remain better-paid, less-stressed, and overall much more comfortable. Except there is still an ambiguous and unformed attachment that I'm not sure is healthy or not to that last place. What is it? Unresolved issues? The crappy coffee?

Top Blogs - Rate my blog - Sign my guestbook - Email me - Go back to index