Coworkers and Time

Those who are fortunate to have a job usually spend the majority of their day with their coworkers. Over time, if you are lucky, they become like a second family. You share joys and sorrows, births and deaths, new relationships and divorces, layoffs and call-backs. You have a bond.

Then suddenly, you lose your job. Surely you will remain friends with at least some of those people. After all, you have spent years with them.

The first year of your separation you are still invited to office gatherings and social functions, and you are welcomed with open arms. Folks genuinely miss you, and you spend a few warm hours catching up with each other. It feels like you never left.

Year two is about the same, although the calls and lunches with the old gang start to dwindle.

Year three rolls around. Things begin to change. One of your former coworkers gets a new job and there is the usual going away party, which of course you are invited to. Some people come up and chit chat, some don't. Some hardly notice you. Some are quite happy to see you and give you big hugs. Some walk by without a glance. It is there, at that party, you realize you are no longer part of the office.

It is somewhat surreal. Almost like when you break up with a lover and then enough time has passed that. when you run into each other at the grocery story, you seem like strangers. The familiar has become unfamiliar. The universe has shifted.

I left Lansing in 1992 and came back in 2006. When I lived here the first time, I had a very large circle of friends, was fairly well-known for my music, and active in my community. When I returned I must have expected time to stand still. Most of my old friends were still here. I thought I would simply pickup where I left off. I could not have been more wrong. Their lives moved on without me. Mine did, too, but in someplace far away, not here.

Tonight, and maybe just for tonight, I am feeling an urge to move on. Like I have overstayed my welcome. There is a staleness in the air. This place is so familiar I struggle to find something new to take the place of those things that are now gone.

I won't go to another office gathering. It is time to let that go. It is time to create something fresh and new. Fresh like snow.