You land a new job, move into a new life,
Set up shop, bring your things in (a few or many),
Meet the neighbors, make new connections, strike up conversation.
Go out for coffee, set up introductory lunches… create a new life in here.
And so it continues on, through vacations and holiday parties and babies and advancing grays and deaths, and so on.
Then one day, it’s time to move on. “So quick? I am sorry, yes. There is no requirement any more. Here is a box.”
And thus it ends.
Pack all that you have gathered into a cardboard box
No time to linger or dawdle, certainly no time for farewells and goodbyes.
Get out quick, and the waters close over your head… as if you never existed.
The coffees and conversations begin to vanish into distant memory, irrelevance, obscurity.
Characters lose definition, quirks and edges.
And that’s really all a life within a life is worth, a person in an organization amounts to.
“And the friendships and connections and shared memories and good work and inside jokes and… what of it all?”
“Nothing, really.”
A matter of happenstance and shared time, so collect your winnings and move on.
Leave no trace behind.
