I'll miss these nerds.

I'm doing it again. I'm still full from my farewell lunch at Union Street with the old team sans Sean. Then I had a little meeting with my boss when we got back. The sincerity in his voice when he was saying that I was an amazing employee (me?!) almost made me take it all back. Of course I know, through all this, the second guessing and the self-imposed guilt, that this is all for the best. That I owe nothing to this company. But it isn't the company that I feel a loyalty to, is it? It's this team, the community I've become a part of, the lunches in the atrium and the inside jokes about how loud our office neighbors are. It's the number of books I've read with a daily 3 hour roundtrip commute for the past couple years. It's the bad coffee that I still think of as a treat at 2:30 in the afternoon. I'm drinking one now. I've become comfortable here, and we all know how comfortable those comfort zones can be.

The truth is, no matter if it's because of my sap of a personality or the true end of an era, I'll miss this dumb little cubicle, the smell of bagels on a Wednesday morning, being able to lose myself in a book or an early morning nap because my stop is the last on the train. I'll miss the twenty minute rides from work to our home when Mike picks me up.

I've received so many responses to a goodbye email I sent out to our IT blogging community, and it's incredibly humbling. It's always rewarding to feel like you've actually been a part of something, that your absence will be felt. Geez, I guess I will miss these nerds.