Last

The last meetings of my on-campus summer school classes are all this week.  Presentations, finals, done.

The last time I had a job, it was last year.  The last thing I thought I would ever get a chance to do is to spend eight months at home with The Princess...unless I was seventy-something and she was taking care of me.  This is not to say that there have not been hardships since losing my last job, but we've managed to survive, even to have fun along the way.  How many people do you know who are effectively able to retire for a year before their thirtieth birthday?  It's the last thing I would have ever expected, the last thing I'd ever consider changing.  These months have been wonderful.

Today...today is the last day of my "retirement" before I start training for the new gig.  Tomorrow, I'll head back down into the Big Bad City and spend the day with one of the site managers, who will be training me.  The plan is to transition me to my permanent location (15 minutes from home - yippee!) by September first.  I'll be part-time there to begin with, transitioning to full-time when the existing site manager retires for good.

I was afraid that the last job I had would be the last one I'd be excited about.  Things were so good there for years, but - inevitably - the office politics began rearing their ugly heads, much more publicly than was absolutely necessary.  I'm a look-on-the-bright-side kind of gal, and it took a lot...but I found myself at a point where I severely disliked my job.  I didn't want to go into the office.  I didn't want to deal with the corporate bigwig clients.

I'm glad my fear was ill-founded.  Here I am, on my last day of freedom, looking forward to this new position with unrivaled enthusiasm.  I'll be working face-to-face with actual people again, helping them through an uber-cool position with everything from daily chores to party planning.  The Hubbs and I were talking about something earlier, and I said something about what I needed to bring to work tomorrow.

Work.  It sounded so foreign on my lips.  But I'm excited about it, and I think I'm ready to go back.  At last.