Plotting The Escape

I almost always get in trouble when I don't listen to that still small voice. Just that month it had urged me to go home- not to stop at the supermarket. I ignored it and my car was crashed into. Still, I hedged my bets. I did what I call my acid test: Ask yourself: What happens if you do this? What happens if you don't? What happens if you stay? What happens if you go?

 

The thought of staying - the very thought of it- filled me with something akin to terror. Leaving with all its uncertainties and years before I really felt I should - the thought of that calmed me down. As events unfolded, I realized. My still small voice was right. It was time.

 

When you've been working as long as I had and have as many hours of leave as I did, you have to negotiate your retirement (or as I had started thinking of it: my escape). I had retirement leave and annual leave coming to me. Lots of it. I could roll my regular leave into a retirement account. But not that retirement leave. If I took the retirement leave in a lump sum, I'd see very little of it after taxes.  My ideal plan was to run out both my retirement leave and annual leave. In the current fiscal climate, that wasn't going to happen. I finally got the word. Yes- I could take my retirement leave. I would have to roll over the retirement leave into a retirement account. My last day after retirement leave would be January 10, 2013. I cleaned out my cubicle giving away a lot of what I had collected over the years (but not nearly enough) and wrote up my retirement letter. Around me, layoff and demotion meetings and restructuring conferences continued. I felt a mixture of relief tinged with survivor's guilt.

 

 

I always wondered how I would feel about leaving. I thought I'd feel bereft. I thought I might feel like I'd lost my identity. I thought there would be a library-shaped hole where my heart had been. While it took me over a month not to say "We" when referring to what was going on in the library, I realized that all the gut-wrenching, heart-breaking, spirit-draining events and outrages that had happened in my professional life over the last 15 years or so had given me this gift: "Regret nothing. That was then, This is now.  You're a person too apart from the labels of caretaker, librarian, daughter, friend, employee. It's time to take care of yourself - way past time, in fact. You're overdue. Escape to a new adventure."

 

On September 28th, I was one of 500 city staffers who escaped to new adventures.