Done yesterday (20110902 Fr)

( raw notes )

Hmm. This is a hard one. I'd call it ok, except that I spent pretty much the entire work day saying goodbye to people, which is sad. I'll stop by occasionally, and try to keep in touch in other ways, but it'll still be difficult.

My last day at EWS coincided with with the monthly all-hands meeting, where each of the three of us who were going back to research got handed a fern for our new office, and a couple of bags of chocolate-covered nuts. And tasty food -- burritos from Chipotle -- augmented by platters of spring rolls and fruit brought in by (lab tech) Grace.

I got several hugs, which was nice. People said they'd enjoyed working with me, and mentioned Middle-Sized Bear qualities like gentleness -- that felt a little odd, but good. I gave out a few of my personal cards.

On the gripping hand, I seem to have gone back to being as bad as ever about making phone calls, and especially to friends. I Do Not Like this, and it makes me feel bad about myself, but I'm not sure what to do about it. It's weird, because I like talking to people, but I don't want to interrupt anything more important (of course, anything must be more important than talking to me, right?). *sighs*

River: Reflections

It's been a long, strange trip. It still is. The journey started three and a half years ago on livejournal, with this post and this song.

It's been quite a while since I was posting regularly on this tag, since I was looking inside and trying to understand myself. Even longer since I really used the river as a metaphor for this journey, or posted about friendship or the care and feeding of geeks. I don't think I've ever gone back and read through the whole thing. I want to change that.

I'd like to make at least one River post every week. Realistically, that's not likely to happen, but it's what I want to aim at.

About two years ago I thought of collecting the best posts and turning them into a book, which would have been called A Year On the River. "Three and a Half Years..." doesn't have the same ring to it, somehow. (No fair mentioning Two Years Before the Mast.) But that's still a possible back-burner project, maybe with crowdfunding.

And less than a week ago, I won a custom icon from the amazing meeks. I love the way she captured the idea of reflecting, which I hadn't even thought about but was obviously there all along. I'm using it for the first time on this post, and hope that it indicates a turning-point both in my posting habits and in my journey of reflection and self-examination.

Come walk with me again? We're about to go around a bend.