Saying Goodbye

I believe that, among my current circle of influence,, it is fairly public knowledge now that I am resigning my current job at the end of this year and relocating to North Carolina to pursuit freelance graphic design work. It occurs to me, as I sit compiling multiple training resources for my replacements, that I am going to have an awful lot of free space in my brain once I download all this knowledge to my successors. I'm very excited for the creative possibilities that presents.

At the same time, it saddens me a little. My time here with some dear, dear friends is coming to an end, and I won't be seeing or working with them on a close basis anymore. All of this information came to me because of the investment by my colleagues (and myself) in my success at this job. For most (if not all) of this information I am painstakingly recording for future users, I can link it to a memory of how I learned it and who taught it to me, or what was going on that prompted the knowledge.

I've invested five years at Muskingum Valley Presbytery, and they've been great years of learning that I am braver than I believe, stronger than I seem, and smarter than I think. Even as I am looking forward to my next great adventure, it is bittersweet. I have come to realize that I will never be completely at home anywhere ever again. A part of my heart will always be living elsewhere. That's the price that you pay for the richness of loving people in more than one place.

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Somehow I know we'll meet again. Not sure quite where, and I don't know just when.

You're in my heart, so until then... gonna smile, gonna cry, saying goodbye.

--Fozzie Bear, "The Muppets Take Manhattan."

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