The Last Day

I have been counting down to June 12th for months.

Marking it on calendars. Referencing it in conversations. Holding it in my mind on the hard days like a fixed point — just get to June 12th — the way you hold a distant light when the present moment feels like too much. Last day of work. The date that meant everything was about to change.

And then it arrived. And it was, almost entirely, quiet.

Leaving Friday

I have worked from home for four years. Which meant my last day looked a lot like every other day — same desk, same three screens, same dogs moving their beds in and out of the office depending on where the morning light was falling. Except that Kelly had suggested, out of nowhere and completely out of character — my usually unspontaneous husband — that we leave for the coast that evening instead of waiting until Saturday.

Kelly's uncle lives in Yachats, on the Oregon coast, and is out of town. We had the house. Four nights. The ocean. Somewhere to land after the landing.

So instead of sitting at my desk waiting for the day to end, I got up. Every hour or so, between tasks, I moved through the house gathering things. Did laundry. Made lists. Packed the car in pieces. The separation from the job had already begun, quietly, in the background, while I was still technically on the clock. Packing then returning to my desk, to see if an email came through or call, or any task needing my attention.

The Quiet Work

My actual work that day was gentle. I wrote handover notes for the two account managers inheriting my book of business — calm, careful notes about the owners they would be taking on, the nuances of each account, the things that mattered. Quiet work. The kind that asks nothing of you emotionally except attention and care, which I had left to give.

I had spent the whole week saying goodbye. Messages from people across departments I had worked alongside for four years. A close work friend posted something in our department Slack — generous and thoughtful, the kind of acknowledgment that makes you feel genuinely seen. I received more warmth than I expected, and I am grateful for every bit of it.

What I Will Take With Me

Underneath all of it, though, something more complicated was settling.

The truth is I loved parts of this job. Not the pressure, not the impossible workload, not the high-performing mandate handed down from above — but the actual craft of the work. I learned an industry, deeply and specifically. I learned to read data and translate it into something a vacation rental owner who hates spreadsheets could actually use. Numbers tell a story — that was something I genuinely believed and got better at over time. Sitting with a listing's performance, finding the narrative inside it, and helping an owner understand not just what was happening but why — that part was interesting. That part I will miss.

And the owners. So many of them thanked me the last few weeks in ways that surprised me — for my professionalism, knowledge and support. Some said they felt they had gained a friend. I felt the same about them. That was real, and I carry it with me.

But I was burned out. I have to say that plainly because it is true and because this blog is for the truth.

Last August I carried two full books of business through the peak of the busy season while a colleague was on emergency leave. I did it willingly. And it broke something I couldn't quite put back together. I kept waiting for the energy to return, the engagement to come back, the part of me that had once genuinely cared to re-emerge. It didn't. Month by month I was doing less. Showing up but not arriving. The plan to leave made it harder, not easier — once your heart knows it is going somewhere else, it is very difficult to ask it to stay.

There is a term for this: quiet quitting. And I will be honest — that is what the last several months were. Not proud of it, not ashamed of it. Just true.

I know there are younger account managers, unburdened by an autoimmune condition, who still struggle under the weight of what this role demands. Some thrive inside it. I think this kind of work requires a particular constitution — and mine, at this stage of my life, in this body, was not built to sustain it. I learned that. That is not nothing.

4:40 PM

At 4:40 PM Pacific time, I closed the open tabs.

No fanfare. No acknowledgment from the system, no ceremony, no final bell. Just the quiet click of a mouse and a screen going dark and four years of a chapter ending the way most chapters end — not with drama but with an ordinary moment that only becomes significant in retrospect.

I closed the computer. Loaded the dogs. Loaded the car. Got in next to Kelly and drove west toward the coast.

Through the Mountains

Through the mountains, something started to happen.

Every few minutes I would notice a breath I had not known I was holding. A tension I had been carrying so long it had stopped announcing itself. A name would float up from some corner of my mind — an owner, an account, a task needing completion — and for the first time in four years I could simply let it go. That is not my responsibility anymore. That world is not mine to tend.

My shoulders dropped.

And then dropped a little more.

And this morning we ate breakfast on the porch in Yachats overlooking the ocean, surrounded by trees and birdsong and the particular quality of light that only exists on the Oregon coast, and they dropped a little more still.

What We Are Leaving For

This is what we are leaving for.

Not the absence of work — we are going toward work, toward building something, toward the particular effort of creating a life from scratch in a country we have always been pointed toward. We are not retiring. We are not escaping.

But we are done with bracing. Done with steeling. Done with the daily girding of ourselves against a world that required more than we had to give and kept requiring it anyway.

What we are building toward feels, for the first time in a long time, like something that could actually hold us. Something that fits. Something that does not ask us to suppress ourselves in order to participate.

The word that keeps coming to me, sitting here on this porch with the dogs at my feet and the ocean in front of me and Kelly beside me and no alarm set for Monday morning, is possibility.

Not certainty. Not security. Not a plan that has been fully figured out.

Just the wide open feeling of a life that has room in it again.

My shoulders dropped a little more when I wrote that.

We leave when we leave. And we are already on our way.