2 weeks notice

So big news for me…I’ve put in my 2 weeks notice at my current job! I’ve been here 5 years and I’m going to miss a lot of the fantastic people I work with, but I’m off to greener pastures. I am going to miss elements of my job but I’m really excited about the new frontier!

Having put in notice I feel energized and almost invulnerable. There’s an incredible lightness of being…a weight has been lifted.

I’m not going to get into a rant of negativity about the reasons why I’m leaving, but rather I pose a question to you: what was it like for you when you gave notice? Positive or negative. If you want to give specific reasons why you left (place you left sucked or the new place was better…) go for it.

I just think that these times are momentous and noteworthy as we make our way through life.

The Solution (Part 2): I’m Will

I look around the waiting room, trying not to make eye contact. My eyes settle on the old magazines fanned out on the coffee table…some look decades old. I rub at my old aching knees and look at my hands, which are thin, frail and covered in age spots. Not the strong hands from my youth; the hands that carried Edith across the threshold. I close my eyes and feel a tear trace its way down my cheek. In that darkness a distant light of memory approaches and I am once again in the all-to-familiar world of the past.

***

Edith is there. We’re in our old kitchen, the one before I moved into a one room efficiency. She’s telling me about how she thinks she’s really reaching her students this year and her face is lit with an inner joy.

“I’m telling you…they’re really getting it! I started the year out by giving them the ability to bye one test score—gone. But I tell them that there are extra credit assignments, available to those that don’t use their bye, that add up to two tests worth of points! You see where I’m going with this?”

I smile, “Yes, my love. I think it’s wonderful. It’s just sad that—“

“I know baby, but that the world we live in.“

I smile back, though it feels only half genuine, and as I look at her, her face slowly goes slack. Her eyes slowly close, her once parted lips seal tight and her face is suddenly covered in far too much makeup. I stand up and walk towards her, as I do she slowly reclines back. I reach her side and suddenly she is in her coffin and I am in my one black suit, preparing to shake hands with all of the people she’s touched. The place is filled with faceless people. Only the little ones, her students, who haven’t reached age yet, come in wearing their grief for all to see. One little curly-haired boy goes up to view and whisper something to Edith. I swear he tells her that she should’ve done the extra credit.

***

I open my eyes. A couple of the people in the waiting room are looking at me, but quickly turn their hooded faces away when they notice I’ve opened my eyes. I feel vulnerable and quickly grab a 7-year-old issue of Time and hide behind it. Warm tears stream down my face. Blinking the tears away, I glance at the clock, which wavers like a Dali painting. They’re 20 minutes late calling me in and two people were here when I came in. Glancing over at the admin, she’s sitting behind a PC in a standard, white hood and her nameplate generically says, “Administrative Assistant.”

After a few moments the admin announces number 72 and I check my ticket, though I know it says 74. I want to scream out that I am not number 74, that I’m Will. I choke back the rage and look at my frail hands lying limp in my lap. I’m Will.

The Solution (Part 1): We the People

We thought we were all so smart. We had it all figured out. The greatest of us, the deep thinkers, the philosophers, the PHDs, and the psychologists all weighed in and we crafted The Solution. Our world had become too chaotic, we needed peace of mind and this seemed to be a buoy we could cling to in the rough waters. We bought into the concept hook-line-and-sinker, but what really excited us, what really had us salivating was how suddenly everything felt like an even playing field. There was no lottery, no tests to pass or fail, and though we knew that the start of it all would be chaotic, we felt powerful…a little deus ex machina in each of our pockets. The hope was that when the dust settled we would walk out anew and better for having gone through it.

Violence, already at an all-time high, was fueled by the hate mongering of the last President, whose very breath when he spoke seemed to fan what was only embers of our human frailty into raging forest fires of hate. We needed peace, to be able to walk through our towns without fear…to become the great nation that was promised us by the previous administration. When The Solution was in its infancy it held the hope of a better tomorrow, it felt like the panacea for our moral decay just might be within our reach.

We followed the talks held by officials on TV, we formed our own local committees, weighed in during town hall meetings, and we cast our opinions out into the ether of every social media platform we had access to. These acts alone seemed to give us a unification we hadn’t witnessed in generations. Then we waited.

Civil service exams were held, offices erected and what seemed like a dream was made real by every city, town and hamlet having their very own federal office to administer The Solution. We were all sent an official letter from on high, outlining the rules and provisions of The Solution. All social media platforms were inundated with The Solution notifications and our TVs rang out in unison with Emergency Broadcast System alerting us that The Solution would be in full effect on the first of the upcoming month.

Now, three generations later, most of us can’t remember a time before The Solution. It has simply become a part of our lives. We were all so smart…