FINAL WEEK AND SOME MEMORIES

It's my last week, so in the strange netherworld where I'm slowly slipping out of sight and relevance, I've been tidying up my old files.

There are some gems from the past. Seeing them glimmer has made me remember some happier times. Like this Slack conversation I recorded on a very hot day, and stuck in a folder called Personal.

A: Where's the ice cream van when you need it? #boiling

B: It's kinda cold down here... #JumpersAllYearRound

C: 23.7 °C in the engine pod

B: If I had a thermometer I could tell you.

A: Come upstairs and you'll melt instantly!

B: It's pretty pleasant upstairs. Swap ye xD

A: I'm not around on Monday so feel free to use my desk

Me: Now that's hotdesking.

Speaking of weather, I found some photos of when the lake burst its banks and flooded across the business park. It seems so strange to see those trees and that bridge rising from the blue, reflected water. I've not been there for so long. I must make sure I walk around that lake when I go in on Friday.

It is odd living through a job you've already left. Not only are you not quite sure what you're expected to do, you also know that there's no real reason to do anything productive. Professionalism has had me writing a handover document, now at about 12,000 words and making sure the team have exactly what they need to continue when I'm not here. Now there's only these strange loose ends left, weaving back through the past and unravelling a bunch of memories.

I saved a screenshot of Erica's status, just after she left. That was a nice thing to have done; I'd forgotten about that. Then there a whole bunch of reports and presentations and spreadsheets, forgotten in the backwaters of my network shared drive. They were so important once; now look at them.

My reflection stares back at me, knowingly.

HR Admin looks like an important folder. I've copied it across but I barely need any of it - old parking schematics, showing where to park while the car park was being resurfaced; the Global Expense Policy as of 2011 - never used it. Absence Self Certification! Waste of time, that one. Old retrospective notes, some pictures for a quiz, Simpsons gifs and old content no-one needs to be thinking about now.

I did manage to find all my old haiku. There are some poignant ones, like #80 here:

#80 13/7/18
We know that ‘thank you’s
Are uttered in the silence
By those who click help

And #63, which in the light of our CEO's hollow catchphrase, "Thank you for all that you do", seems to capture at least some of the sense of the last year and a bit:

#63
Somewhere, on a beach
Someone is grateful to us
For working so hard

It's nice to see these old memories again. I have fond memories of tapping out the syllable count on my fingers at my desk. All of this nostalgia makes me wish I'd kept a copy of the cartoon book I made for Erica when she left. 

So, just a couple of days left then. Tonight, a few people have suggested quiet drinks, which I hope will be exactly that - I won't have seen these colleagues in quite some time so I'm more than a little nervous. All I've got to do is turn up and be myself though, I hope.

Which is exactly how I should start my next chapter, isn't it?