Limbo

As my years at Current Job have shortened to a few weeks and then to a few days and now, Thursday night, to just a few hours, I've been reflecting on how I've been assmiliating this new phase of life. I've never changed jobs before, really. Over the ten years since college, I have left one position to go to grad school, spent years there doing what you do in grad school, accepted and worked through a one-year appointment as an adjunct professor, and then took Current Job. Now after feeling as passive as a remora for three years, I've chosen to leave C.J. for Next Job.

While living out my strange time as a lame (but a busy) duck at Current Job, I've had the pleasant sensation of knowing things are drawing to a close, a feeling not unlike the feeling of being almost done with a cross-country race or the GRE or a long drive. It's not quite the satisfaction of having done it, but the warm expectation of soon being done with the trial.

At least, that's how I've felt on the job, while actually sitting at that damn desk I'll never have to see again after tomorrow. At home and especially on the bus back and forth each day, I've felt a different sensation: the sense of limbo or suspension that I have when flying - an airport feeling. This, too, is pretty pleasant; I've always loved that in-between feeling on the concourses, when you can't do much except read or people-watch or find something to eat. And I suppose limbo is a good way to view my current state, because I hope I'm my way up from something like damnation. That's both too grand and too juvenile, but on the other hand I don't have any naive expectation that N.J. will be paradise. It merely has to be moderately, humanely interesting and rewarding.