When the volume is always turned up and you’re part of a cog machine that is moving fast, you don’t know what it’s gonna be like, stepping away from that until your gone.
Three days into retirement - this was part of my initial reaction. Different from vacation - because even on vacation you knew the machinery still existed. And even if you tried not to look at email or work chat - you’d steal a view every now and again just to check up on things. And often in emergent situations - people would still reach out.
But this feels different, even after just three days removed, the silence, and the lack of communication was pretty deafening. It made me wonder whether all communication is transactional, and whether the reason people communicate with each other or communicated with me, was because they had to, because they were part of the machine that I was part of; because I was the boss. It’s a shock to the system to go from moving that fast and having that many threads of communication and always being asked something : to then nothing.
I am sure things will become a new normal over time - but that’s the feeling right now.