04.15.03
I never liked saying goodbye.
Through the years, I have had to say those words often to a lot of different people. That is the difficulty of living and working in a transient town. People come to college towns to take classes or work, and then move on out to the rest of the world when their collegiate obligation is fulfilled. Or they come to live in a town with a vibrant, but temporary mosaic of people and places.
Normally people don't come to settle in a college town. They come singly, or with an attached clan, gain needed experiences, and then they take their families and loved ones away with them.
The circle of college town life.
Now, imagine all of those faces passing through our doors, sometimes for years, sometimes for a single visit.
I see some people twelve to twenty times a year, and talk with them about their lives and families, and my life and family, and get to know them as well as you can under those circumstances. These are the sort of people that send Christmas cards and give graduation gifts.
And now I am the one that is transient. I am the one that is leaving them behind, having gained my needed experience. I no longer have many close personal friends in this town, but I have many clients that are friends of some sort, and we care about each other's lives.
Lots of these people are happy for me, that I am finally moving on with my life, and getting out of this dusty little one-horse-and-a-college town. But a lot of them are upset that I am leaving them. They depend on me to make them look and feel good, which is my professional purpose.
And I have to tell all of them goodbye.
I've gotten more hugs and well-wishes for leaving now, than for any other event in my life.
I've had to hold back a lot of tears, because I never liked saying goodbye, and it hurts to never see some of these people again.
Of course, the only bright note is that I also have to never see some of these people again.
I can't always miss everyone, just most everyone.
What's in your head?