Brandon's Last Week

Last week was my last week of working for a while. Friday, June 19th was my last day. So I am now officially on sabbatical... woot woot! 

It was a good last week. For those that don't know much about my work, for the past year+ I've been mainly working remote. I'm sure I'll do a blog post or two later about the ins and outs of working remote. But long story short, I thought it would be best to work my last week in the office so I could be more readily available for discussions and to see people in person that I haven't seen in a while. 

It also allowed me to schedule other things to sorta have a series of send-off/meet-ups. So just like old times I scheduled a couple rounds of lunch soccer. We had a pretty decent turn out. It was really nice to hangout w/ some old friends. But what made these rounds extra special was that Katie was able to join in. This was her first time playing ever other than just kicking a ball around with me for exercise. She did AMAZING. Truly a natural. She had more goals than me on both days that we played. And also just like the good old days I did end up getting injured on the second day. Luckily it wasn't too bad. It was just very difficult to walk/stand up for like 24 hours. It was a "nice" reminder of how old I'm getting. But Katie fixed me right up. There are definite perks to being married to a physical therapist. 

I had a couple really nice lunches as well. I grabbed some delicious Mexican food with a couple guys I used to work a lot with in the past. And then on Thursday my team put together a barbecue sorta in honor of my last week. There was cake and everything. It was a very nice send-off. 

In terms of actual work, I spent most of the week with lots to do. I tried my best to not do any more coding. It would be bad if I just introduced a bunch of bugs and then left. Instead I made lots of videos and blog posts where I just talk through different code I've worked on or had opinions about. I tried to give as much direction to the team as possible. There were of course a lot of things I wish I could have had more time to wrap up. But overall I think I left them in a pretty good position to move forward without me without too much headache. 

Mixed into a few of the evenings that week too, I did the traditional TechSmith meetup at Franks, a bar down the street from work, for drinks with whoever wanted to just chat and hangout "one last time". It was a good reminder of how cool the people I work with are and how I need to start being intentional in spending time with them too, both now and in the future. 

Since I didn't want to commute back and forth everyday that week, I crashed with my old roommate at my old place in the Lansing area where I still actually have my old bed. In the evenings we sampled from his large cellar of beer. We made sweet potato-black bean tacos one night and smoked chicken tacos another. So that too just made the week extra special. 

In general the week was filled with awkwardness. Goodbyes are awkward to begin with, but there was added awkwardness because leaving for a year is different then leaving indefinitely. It kinda feels like just a long vacation. But at the same time a year is a long time and there is no guarantee I'll be back. So both myself and others didn't really know what to say sometimes. 

Friday was the most awkward. I had to send out my "goodbye" email which was a bit odd to write. There were of course some oddly phrased goodbyes, good lucks, etc. But it was also strange because at the end of the day I was leaving all my computer stuff behind. For the past 7 years I've always walked out of those doors with a computer bag, but I turned all that in. So because of that feeling of missing something, I had to do a run down of my personal items check list a few extra times before I took my last step out. 

So yeah, that was my last week. It went better then I could have ever expected. I'm very thankful for such an awesome place to work and that so many people have been very supportive of this decision. There will be many days that I will miss it all, but I think the adventures ahead make it all worth it.