kestrel

Resignation Follow-Up

Personal entry follows.

My resignation was sent out shortly after 8pm last night. I had just finished my time on the exercise bike, and the message showed up in my personal mail inbox (I'd BCC'd myself on the email), letting me know that the leadership team had been sent the message. Maybe 90 seconds later, my supervisor calls me on the phone. Mind you, the man is currently in a hospital, recovering from heart failure and long COVID. Timing sucks.

However, he seemed very supportive of my move, and even cheerful. We had a solid discussion about my future plans, his recovery, and the fact that the night classes will be sorted out even in his absence: the senior job coach and I will be staffing all the sessions. Additionally, he's lined up a guest speaker for one of the Saturdays while in his hospital bed. What a guy.

One of the topics we spoke about was the fact that there's limited time, overall, in life. This was punctuated with his recent admission to the hospital, of course. Reflecting on his heart attack, he said to me: "If there's one thing that this experience has taught me, it's that when you have a chance to do something like that, you take it." So from what I can tell he and I are on the same page with where my head is and where I want to go in the year/s ahead.

Both the other two senior staff acknowledged that things will be different when I'm gone, but that following your dreams and being guided by your passion is important. They agreed with me that I'm very fortunate to be in a position to do so. Everyone was appreciative that I provided so much advance notice (my last day is - of all days - 1st April, 2022). That's plenty of time to possibly hire another staff member to take my place, and definitely enough time to train someone for that role.

This is actually the second time I've resigned from my position at this organization. The first time was in mid-2012, and I had moved to a different time zone, and further south, with a lady I was seeing at the time. About two years later I'd returned to the area - staying with relatives for about a month and a half, until I found my footing - and in early 2015 I was a full-time employee there once again.

Excluding those two years out of town, I've been working at this organization for 12 of the past 14 years. It's been a good run and not only do I have nothing to be ashamed of, but I know I've changed many peoples' lives for the better through my efforts. Beyond that, it's almost unheard of in this day and age - or any other, really - to leave a job and then be rehired at the same place years later. I've been very fortunate.