And Then There Were 2.….… Weeks

I have a fort­night left. 2 weeks. 14 days. Lots of hours.

2 weeks left of the first phase of my work­ing life. I’m end­ing my 5 year IT career and it feels weird. Bittersweet.

I’m going to miss so much about work­ing here. I’m also chomp­ing at the bit and can’t wait to blow this pop­si­cle stand. It’s an odd mix of emotions.

Things I’ll miss

The peo­ple. I work with some amaz­ing peo­ple. They’re fierce­ly intel­li­gent, gen­er­ous, and kind. I have some kick butt con­ver­sa­tions with them and I’ll miss hav­ing them around to chat with. Pol­i­tics, law, eco­nom­ics.…… I’ll have to find new peo­ple to talk about that stuff and peo­ple like that aren’t exact­ly a dime a dozen.

The food. There is an over­abun­dance of free food that floats around my office. It’s not just any food either. No, this is gourmet food that’s been pre­pared spe­cial. I’ve tried so many new food items because of work­ing here. Turns out, I do like aspara­gus and gou­da cheese and brus­sels sprouts (in lim­it­ed quan­ti­ties but I did­n’t die eat­ing it like I always thought I would). It’s not every day, but it hap­pens often enough that I con­sid­er it a perk of work­ing here. That means I don’t have to pack as many snacks to bring with me to work, or I don’t have to prep lunches.

My friends. Tech­ni­cal­ly, I sup­pose this could be lumped under the peo­ple cat­e­go­ry, but they’re in a cat­e­go­ry all their own. I’ve made some amaz­ing friend­ships in my 5 years here. My work wife, who hap­pened to be sit­ting near me when I was an intern and turned into my clos­est friends. My hap­py hour crew where we hang out and com­plain about all the old peo­ple hold­ing back our careers. My finance-mind­ed friends, who cel­e­brate each pay-day and bonus day with me and talk about opti­miz­ing our bud­gets. I’ll be able to stay in touch with them thanks to the won­ders of tech­nol­o­gy, but it won’t be the same.

The income. I get paid what feels like a LOT of mon­ey to work here. I’ve prob­a­bly tak­en that for grant­ed, even though I’ve used that mon­ey far more effec­tive­ly than oth­ers I know. I’m real­ly going to miss get­ting reg­u­lar pay­checks, but I’m hop­ing that’s tem­po­rary as I work to build up my own streams of income (both active and passive).

Things I will not miss

Work­ing for some­one else. I’m work­ing real­ly hard and see­ing most of my efforts pad some­one else’s bot­tom line. I would like to reap ALL the efforts of my hard work. This also encom­pass­es my feel­ings about hav­ing to be in the office at cer­tain times for cer­tain lengths of time. Aka show­ing up at 6 am and hav­ing to be in the office for no less than 8 hours even if there is no work to do.

Office pol­i­tics. I don’t care who you are or where you work, I can guar­an­tee there are some sort of office pol­i­tics or dra­ma around you. It’s human nature. I per­son­al­ly work with some­one who hates my guts and does­n’t hes­i­tate to share her opin­ion with oth­ers around me. I’ve let it roll off my back because, leav­ing in 2 weeks, but it still both­ers me and neg­a­tive­ly impacts how my team can func­tion. I’m also hap­py I don’t have to wor­ry about advanc­ing to the next rung on the lad­der and what that entails.

True sto­ry, a friend of mine recent­ly was up for a super­vi­sor posi­tion. Despite hav­ing the back­ing of the VP for it, she was passed over because she did­n’t have any pre­vi­ous super­vi­so­ry expe­ri­ence. So now, she gets to work extra hard and do pro­ba­tion­ary super­vi­sor lev­el work.….… with­out the pay and with­out the guar­an­tee of pro­mo­tion. Awful.

The men­tal lev­el of food. I love to eat (see above) but I was ruined for mak­ing food. I went from my par­en­t’s house to col­lege dorm to mil­i­tary. I had my food pre­pared for me for the first 23 years of my life.…. and then I had to fig­ure out what to make. The men­tal effort of mak­ing sure I have break­fast, lunch, and snacks ready to go in the morn­ing for a day at work is exhaust­ing. I also hate hav­ing to buy food at the cafe­te­ria at work because expen­sive! When I’ve worked from home, it’s as easy as going into the kitchen and mak­ing food. I very much look for­ward to free­ing myself from the bat­tle of what to take into work. I’ll still prob­a­bly meal prep because it’s effi­cient but not at the lev­el I do now.

Lim­it­ed vaca­tion time. I don’t want to trav­el the world full-time, or even go on that many trips. I do, how­ev­er, want to not be rushed when I trav­el. When I’m work­ing for some­one else, I get lim­it­ed vaca­tion time and that leads to stress. Do I want to go on a two-week vaca­tion to Lon­don to see the Har­ry Pot­ter play, or would I like to take 3 day week­ends through­out the year? I always seem to run out of vaca­tion after Christ­mas which usu­al­ly means no trav­el in the spring. Some­times, you just want to get away from the snow and cold for a lit­tle bit. No such dice for me. Now I’ll be able to take as much time off.…… as long as I’m ok with get­ting paid $0 for not working.

My to-do list

As time grows short, my to-do list (both pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al) grows ever longer. Fun­ny how they’re inverse like that.

-I need to fin­ish up some projects at work.
‑Send out emails to every­one I’ve ever worked with using mail merge. (plus a few actu­al per­son­al­ized writ­ten cards to those I real­ly want to but­ter up before I go)
‑Sched­ule lunches/happy hours/coffees with peo­ple for one last chat
‑Clean up my office space
‑Grab some mov­ing boxes
‑Pack up my stuff
‑Arrange trans­porta­tion of said stuff to Minneapolis
‑Do a small repair on emp­ty unit #1
‑Find a ten­ant for emp­ty unit #1 (again)
‑Find a ten­ant for soon to be emp­ty unit #2
‑Fix soffits
‑Replace back stairs
‑Swap insur­ance for rental insur­ance on house
‑Renew car plates

I get to do all this while work­ing on the blog, pod­cast, Mas­ter­mind group, and Etsy shop. It’s going to be a busy 3 weeks com­ing up, but I’m up to the chal­lenge! Wish me luck!

Does any­one have any advice on cheap one way mov­ing options? Or on how to deal with slight­ly hos­tile cowork­ers? It’d be much appreciated!