04/21/07 - 11:43 p.m.

I worked that job, every day, five days a week, eight hours, plus lunch, plus a commute.

I didn't interact much with my co-workers -- either in this office, or the bigger one down south. But I probably should've gotten in touch with my dissatisfactions -- how I felt kind of detached from them, how my contributions seemed small and unnecessary, and how I didn't like the kind of work I was doing.

You'd think that leaving that job would put an end to all that. My old counselor would probably say it doesn't work that way. She asked me what I used to do at my old job, and it brought everything up. And I would probably have the same reaction if she asked me about my last job.

Maybe I keep this system of worries inside me. Instead of being in touch with myself, I learn ways to attach significances to the work that's ahead of me -- and then when I quit the job, I have all this stuff left inside of me. And maybe I never get rid of it.

The other thing that's sad is realizing -- remembering -- the hopes I'd had for this job, and then the reality. It's too bad I couldn't have recognized that disappointment in real time. I never wrote anything. Sometimes I did, and I liked that, but other times, I just didn't; that wasn't what the job was.

It was meetings. It was being with people on the same project. I didn't/wouldn't/couldn't keep up with the projects, so that made it hard for me to become friends with them. Maybe it just wasn't a good fit.

And I did try to tell them that, tried to get moved to different areas, several times. But maybe I should have tried harder. Maybe I just didn't "advocate" for my work happiness hard enough. (I was trying to keep a low profile after making so much trouble when they tried setting up a "lead" over our group.)

Maybe you can't let go, maybe you shouldn't let go, that easily. Of work, I mean - of the old network of worries. If you do, you'll always be a little less, have a little less left for the rest of your life. Until you do pick that lock.

I need to stop doing that - the strategy of not thinking about someplace I'm trying to leave behind. Ironically, the best way to leave it behind is to think about it... Think it all through, until it's done. And gone.

I'm trying to do that now...

One last thought. I was good to my female co-worker. I tried to be good to other co-workers -- walking them to their cars, just for example. They say sometimes you don't even know how much a small act of kindness means. Maybe I can content myself in that. That I tried. That there was a good intention, a good spirit. There was.

There was that.