Today I wake up to begin my last day at Adobe. I’ve known this day was coming for a long time, but never really expected I would feel this way when it did- a little nervous, a little excited, and a whole lotta anxious. It’s a bit like the morning before your last day of school when you know the people and places you see today are ones you’ll remember the rest of your life, but they won’t be part of your day – to – day life after this evening, for the first time in 12 years.

I’m preparing for my day by packing up a laptop I won’t return home with, attempting in vain to clean out an Outlook inbox I’ll never reach the end of once today’s over and my Adobe accounts are disabled. Rifling through a neatly – ordered closet of clothes that will all get yanked down into boxes in short order. Wondering if I remembered to do that one last thing, for that one last time, before the light goes out in my offices and I move my family six hours away from this place – and I’m pretending as if it’s just another day.

So many small routines that you get used to over the years, small comforts that support you you throughout your days, your weeks, your months, that become an imprint on your life after 12 years. All to change as of tomorrow morning, much as if I had time-warped back to that last day at college, facing a summer vacation with no end and the need for myself to think life all over from scratch again. It’s a little bit scary too, I’ll admit. One foot before the other, though– I’m going to enjoy this last day of routine no matter how difficult it really is for me inside. None of my schools even lasted 12 years, though
– these people, places, sights, sounds, and smells are part of me now. I never really acknowledged the separation anxiety I’d face leaving Adobe until now, with it staring me in the face so brusquely.

This isn’t going to be easy– I never thought it would, of course. But it’s certainly going to be a bit more difficult than I expected. I guess starting afresh never is.

Well, here I go.