End of One Era

Oops, I missed another day :( Track record isn’t turning up very well. I’ve mostly been blogging late at night, but when I don’t have my laptop close, I have yet to find a good substitute. I even bought a bluetooth keyboard for my iPad mini, but it’s too small to type comfortably.

So, yesterday was my last day of work! It was a very weird experience because it felt like any other day, but I know I’m never gonna be there again. It was snowing in the morning, so I went in around noon and caught up with Clay for an hour and heard about his future plans. I managed to also catch Kawin in the afternoon, and the typical Friday attendees – Lucia, Andrew, and Sudi. (Apparently Ana was there too, but I didn’t see her.) I thought it might sink in at some point in the day, but even now, one day later, it doesn’t feel like very much of anything because I’m the only one leaving. It’s not a slow, transitioning out like senior week of college. It felt like leaving a party in the middle, where you didn’t think you’d get that much out of staying any longer but because it was still going on, it felt inappropriate to leave. I guess I will show up for my new job on Monday, and let the difference sink into me slowly then.

I also thought I’d have more concluding, sentimental thoughts, but I am also strangely devoid of them. Everything I can think about my first full-time job out of college is very practical. I greatly appreciated working with people of varying ages, even though that was intimidating when I first started. Many of the mentors I admired the most left within a year of my starting, so it was in this job that I slowly developed the sense of finding your own way amongst the madness. I have endless appreciation for the devil-may-care attitude of the first team that I worked with, the Accenture Digital Optimization team. I graduated college with this idea that stiff suits and stiff attitudes were all that was in store for me, but this particular team refused to drink the Kool-aid, follow the company line, and be a gear in the machine. For those same reasons, the performance of the practice as a whole might be questionable (and more straight-edge company-liners have brought this up to me as well, as to why they weren’t as gung-ho about this group as I was), but it gave me so much more clarity and freedom to identify what I wanted in my career. I also probably have the only career counselor who I go rock climbing with, as well as get career encouragement to leave the company if it made sense and matched what I was looking for. Also, I have not worn a suit since the day I interviewed for Accenture.

I came in thinking I would be doing IT Strategy, which is tech/infrastructure consulting with a workforce of primarily Indian or East Asian 40+ somethings, but instead ended up in digital marketing/customer experience, with a diverse, dynamic group in every sense — culture, age, experience, attitudes. It felt like a community, even though it had always seemed weird to me that we were geographically dispersed.

Ultimately, I decided to leave because other opportunities came my way, but the impetus was because I was comfortable and complacent, and wanted to push myself more. I was seeing people in fields I was incredibly passionate about achieve amazing feats, and the stars were only getting younger and younger. I felt like the door was closing, and I was never one who could sit still when an opportunity was dangled in front of me, no matter how much better I have been at conquering FOMO these days.

The kind words people have been giving me about the transition, and especially the new role, have been very heartening. I’m a little nervous myself as to whether I can fill the expectations they have for me, so I doubly appreciate all the faith people have in me. /shaky smile/ Finally, an end to my cabin fever! I’m terrible at doing nothing.

I ducked out of work early to go swing by Teaus (Tea 4 Us? TeaUS? TeaUS?) because I saw Liana post these cute photos of colorful drinks in 12oz glass bottles and I had to have one! So into glass containers recently. I went home and killed some time, and got ramen with Steven at Tabata Ramen, which I’ve never heard of before. It was pretty straightforward, tasty ramen, though I think the waitress hated me :(

We stopped by The Skylark afterwards to check out the view (as seen in the photo) and kill some time before meeting some Alpha Etas in KTown later to gossip and hear about their exciting dating lives. Have to be a nosy grandmamama, you know :D