and then you pause for effect

I�ve spent the last several hours realizing that I�ll be leaving my current position, a job that I have loved from day one. It has dawned on me that I will no longer have interaction with our faculty, a group of wonderfully funny and intellectual human beings. I will no longer listen to student interactions in the student services area. It has all slowly dawned on me. And yet�yet I look at my clock and it�s 9:44 p.m. and I quickly realize that next week at this time I will be in bed with my man happily sleeping. Then I realize I will have no more chairs to push. You know�those chairs are heavy and menacing. I realize I will never again clean a white board, fill up a stapler, provide equipment, listen to complaints (not of the service type anyway). I realize the latter and I feel a sense of relief. And yet, I think of the former statements and it�s much like graduating from one place to move on to another and it hits me harder than I thought it ever would. I have enjoyed all of these months of interaction. I know many many of the students and yet have never attended a course here. I know the entire faculty and yet I have never been taught by them. I have learned much, have changed much.

There are always those stepping stones in life that cause you to pause�.to look back�to look forward. I have had several of them lately, and I have paused happily. It�s a good practice to examine oneself.

I am proud of myself. And yet in all of that the one biggest thought I have as I write this is boy I need to get a haircut because my bangs sure are getting too long. ;-)