The Sixth Week After the Announcement

The posts always look the same. Excited to share that after fifteen years I am starting a new chapter.

What nobody posts is the sixth week and weeks that follow.

By then the goodbye messages have stopped. The calls that used to come all day do not come at all, because they were never for you, they were for the role. There is no one to walk over to. Nobody asks what you think about anything. You are at home at eleven on a Thursday morning and the house is very quiet.

I have sat with a fair number of people in that stretch. Some left because they had to. Some chose it and were right to. What they describe is much the same either way. Money enough for now, and no idea how long now lasts. The arithmetic getting done every few days. And nobody they can say any of it to.

Not at home, because the family is already living with the decision and they do not want to add to it. Not with friends still inside, who would take it as a warning. Not with anyone in the market, because you cannot look uncertain while you are asking people for work.

So they say it is going well. Building the pipeline. Early days but positive.

The announcement is the easy part to write. It is everything after it that people end up carrying on their own.