Invisible

Bad thing: This morning at the college where I work for exactly five more days, the coffee shop was closed.

Good thing: My boss volunteered to drive to Starbucks and buy me a coffee.  (Okaaaaaay, thanks.)  Internal monologue: Is he acting weird because I'm leaving, or is he just being nice?

Weird thing: He returns with my very nice coffee.  He ran into someone there who works in my hallway but not my program.  Turns out, this guy - a man who I have said hello to each time I've passed him in our hallway for over 12 months - never knew that there was another employee working in this office.  That feeling I've been having here, of invisibility? It is not an illusion. No one even knows I'm here! 

I remember my first week here, when I was waiting for my boss to take me around and introduce me to everyone in the hallway.  Slowly, it dawned on me that he was never going to introduce me.  After more than a year, I still do not know most of the people in my hallway.  And now I'm leaving, and they will not even know the difference.

Good thing: When I email a woman who had been hard on me in a previous meeting to let her know I will be leaving soon, she replies that she is truly sad I am leaving, hopes we can still work together somehow, and was impressed with me.

Bad thing: I realize that when I thought she was being hard on me in that meeting, she was really just being wary of my boss, who she knew previously.

Bad thing: Spent lunch break bounced around in the robot phone system of my health insurance.  Told them my birth-date and address six times.  After 25 minutes, when I was near tears, I was told that I need to ask H.R., not the health insurance.

Bad thing: Realized the one month of COBRA I need to buy so there is no gap in my health insurance is $330 more than the already-high cost I was anticipating.  I think I need to just suck it up and buy it, but spending money makes me feel crazy and out of control.

Bad thing: Realized that if I had tacked on two more days to the day I declared to be my last day of work here, I would have had insurance coverage with no gap and no extra cost.  Those will be an expensive two days.  We were supposed to go on a trip.  We still might, but on Friday my husband has an unexpected day-long meeting that is screwing everything up.  I'm stressed out about trying to plan a trip this quickly.  We can't decide where to go.  I made a chiropractor appointment and have already cancelled once.  I think I need to cancel again as we shift our travel plans back another day.

Good thing: Had a meeting with someone who gifted me a book she wrote, which is something I am interested in reading.

Bad thing: She only gave me the book to smooth over the fact that she was backing out of the project she had agreed to do, which had been her idea in the first place.  Nothing gets done around here.  Nothing.


Bad thing: I'm having this gloomy feeling that I am doing leaving wrong.  That I resigned wrong, am inquiring about insurance wrong, etc., etc.  This is stupid, but it's there just the same. It's that part of me that likes to feel like everyone approves of me, and I feel like I'm being a bad girl in quitting my job.  Oh, this damn guilt, will it ever leave me be?  I deserve this, I know I do. 

Yesterday, my boss told me he had thought our program would run itself.  That is absurd, and really validates that of course I need to move on.  A whole new thing awaits me.  I'm sipping the cold Starbucks coffee from this morning, wondering what lies ahead.