My last day in the office!

This is it! My last day in the office, four weeks after I have told my boss that I’d quit working as a manager at a large energy company in The Netherlands. While sitting at my desk I’m overlooking the office space that is getting quieter every minute. People are leaving early to start their Queensday pre-celebrations, or actually it’s called Kingsday now.

I did it! Months I’ve listed out pros and cons, calculated, but most of all being a private viewer to the everlasting battle between voices in my head and gut feel. I guess the voices in the head managed to stay upright until round 133, after that they got knocked out by the gut feel. Not in the lease was the gut increasingly being supported by a growing feeling that I was displaced in this path of regular expectations: a good office job, living in Amsterdam, getting up at 6:30 a.m. every morning, taking the same train to work every day. I quit to start a journey.

Somehow I feel happy and very sad at the same time. When walking to the train station, Cornelius calls and asks how my last day in the office felt like. I’m a bit snappy because I want to hide the feeling that there’s a stone in my stomach and I feel something wet burning behind my eyes. Because it’s not only quitting a job, but also seeing my colleagues for the last time. Those office mates who coached me through challenges, helped me relativise and always made me laugh when that political playing field got the better of me.

I feel sad because it’s not only quitting a job, but also hitting the pause button on the rest of my life: friends, family, house, city, country. Something I never before imagined myself doing. Yet as I leave the building for the last time, face turned towards the sun with closed eyes, I feel that leaving the beaten track, at this point in my life, is perfectly logical and inevitable.

But don’t let me get too sentimental now, no need to linger on too long. At this moment, standing here outside, for the first time in a very long time, I feel myself, truly, be. Time for a new adventure!