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A co-worker is retiring, and cleaning out her office. Since our department is being dissolved, with no foreseen future, suddenly almost thirty years of paperwork, documentation, reports and records she's kept is obsolete. She's having quite the time throwing everything away!
It's liberating yet sad. Everything changes.
I've experienced this kind of feeling only once, when we sold my Mother's house. We took what we wanted, contracted an estate sale person, and walked away. It was a weird, yet oddly satisfying feeling.
How about you, have you ever walked away without a care from something that was once part of your life?
5 comments:
I left a job 4 months before everyone else was laid off, the business transferred, and the office closed. I walked away with only my personal belongings and an office chair, leaving all my documentation because they may have needed it to pass on to our successors. Who knows if they did or not??? When I cleaned out my mother's house I did it all myself and I kept a lot. But I had unlimited time, and the house was only 2 blocks away.
When I took my teaching job, after finishing my PhD, I brought with me 4 or 5 boxes of journal articles. These were all articles I read or cited for my dissertation. They seemed so important at the time.
After a few years of teaching, I realized I was never planning to delve back into research in geology, and I put all that paper in the recycling bin. It was weird --those papers had been such a big part of my life for 6 years, and in the end I was able to easily say goodbye to it. I've never missed it :-)
Oh yes, & I got a mess of office supplies too. (Still have the stapler.)
Really w/o a care because the lay-off package was pretty damn good. My only regret was that I hadn't contributed to an IRA or 401(k) or whatever it was, but I'd had no intention of being there 18 yrs. when I started.
When the Bush Depression hit its stride in 2009, I started the effort to close my architectural office. Many drawings and project files and office equipment went out. It was very hard.
the only regret is that I think I also threw out my college portfolio of work. Not because I think it is useful, but I figured I could get a few yuks by scanning it and posting it on the blog.
It would have been wonderful to do this with my mother's house... but we couldn't, due to her line of work (which needed documentation saved for up to 20 years) and her filing system (mostly in piles of mish-mash all over the place). My poor SIL spent more than a year going through everything.
My husband gets rid of things en masse and loves the freedom. Apparently, I am more like my mother.
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