Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... my last day at Saltmine.

Five years. It’s a hardy long stretch and no mistake. And today was a pretty good day to go out on. I had a last call with a favorite client during which I walked them through a number of problems, solutions, and avenues to the solutions, and, walking out of the meeting, I thought that no one else in the company could have presented it as well and clearly as I had. The next time something similar comes up, I wouldn’t be surprised if the conversation takes twice as long and thrice as many days.

Humility, it’s always been my strong suit.

And then Jon scheduled me for a last-minute estimation meeting, dashing my hopes for ditching out at 4pm and seeing a matinee to round off my last day, but Jai was there and I was there and he had mapped out an architecture and I had mapped out a project plan, and no one but the two of us could have taken the project prognostication so far so quickly and then come together and been so closely in synch that everything we talked about was just amends. It was surreal; we have never been in such close accord and it was as if we were talking in one voice to answer the questions the others had, leapfrogging each other to polish up the plan and architecture and tighten up the vision. It was a great meeting and I will miss Jai quite a bit.

It was a good day to go out on. It was good to be reminded of the parts of Saltmine that I enjoyed most.

When I first arrived at Saltmine in ’99, it was an oasis in the desert for me. Bad management makes or breaks every work experience, and I was blissfully glad to be shut of Airborne and Allen. And Saltmine had so many great things – a stocked kitchen, pay for the hours you worked, even overtime, quirky funny people, enthusiastic and appreciative customers, free parking across the street, and a stocked kitchen with chocolate every day of the week.

If Saltmine turned from oasis back into desert during the years I was there, it was still my little patch of sand and I was incredibly grateful for what it had been, which made it all the harder to pack up and leave. It was a place that had given me refuge for so long, including paychecks across that long dark time of layoffs and a depressed job market. It was hard to give up hope that things might improve, that management might awaken to the idea that employees were their customers, just as clients were the employees’ customers, and that perhaps the company ought to respect, cherish, and reward them.

And, of course, I’m scared of the new job. Will I measure up? Will I add value to their company? Will my boss like me or will we end up talking about his family (it is apparently a universal truth that you can fill airspace with someone you don’t like by talking about their family and during that time, it’s as if the animosity dissipates entirely. Of course, at some point, you have to turn back to business and then you find it was just ignored, not forgotten. But at least you had a few minutes of being human to each other)? Will it be 70 hour work weeks and me not getting home till midnight again? Will I get into an accident on the freeway and die on my motorcycle when I’m so close to paying off the house? Will they be expecting me to know technologies I know nothing of? It is frightening stuff and I am properly anxious. We’ll see.

Even though I keep reminding myself it is Tuesday, today feels like Friday. I don’t have anything [Saltmine] to do tomorrow. A not insignificant chapter of my life has closed and I feel very still and quiet inside, holding this fermata for I-don’t-know-how-long between the joy of leaving an unhappy stress behind and the clouded fatigue that I know is going to overtake me tomorrow when I am thrust into learning a completely new business with new uncertainties.

I could list an easy half-dozen or ten people who still give a spark of life to Saltmine and I will miss them as it settles in that we won’t be chatting and collaborating every day.

But for now, I am just in this pause, this moment of freedom and lightness that I have been expecting ever since I resigned and haven’t felt till just this evening.