Quit job...Check!

Friday marked the last day of life in my cube. I dreaded the day. I can't stand being the center of attention. If I ever get married, I will surely die. When my co-worker picked me up in the morning, I begged him for some of his Ativan.

As predicted, people stopped by my cubicle all morning to drown me in cries of, "you're so lucky, I wish I could do the same thing, stay in touch, and where are you going?" Truth was, yes, I am lucky - and yes I do feel a tremendous amount of guilt at being able to travel the world for four months. Also, with no ticket in hand, I had no idea where we would really end up going. I threw out various countries at these people while they stared at me, with the same blank look. I imagined after the first two countries I named, they stopped paying attention and focused more on what an asshole I was to be able to take such a trip.

At 12:30, my regular lunch crew began sending IMs demanding to know where I wanted to go for my final meal. In a city with so many choices, the daily decision of where to eat was one that always plagued us. Our best week ever was when we decided to eat ethnic every day. We covered Korean, Ethiopian, and Mexican, and by Thursday we were all out of ideas. We were simply apathetic. That and 3/4 of the crew had various tummy issues and couldn't always handle exotic ethnic fare.

I chose Ethiopian for the final meal to the protest of one of the lunch crew members. Said member loathed the special Ethiopian spongy bread as she claimed it reminded her of a spongy penis. We promised her a trip to 7-11 afterwards, and off we went.

The remainder of my final afternoon at the office consisted of me lifting papers from my file cabinet and depositing them into the trash. I then hosted a garage sale, giving away various desk trinkets - a small frog, a pair of Thai chopsticks, a few pictures of Gael Garcia Bernal (who two people told me thought was Keanu Reeves the entire time he was up at my cube), and loads of left-wing rhetoric. Hillary 2008!, Bush/Cheney axis of stupidity, that Jesusland map of America. The good stuff had been tagged weeks earlier and was promptly picked up at the beginning of the sale.

For my dreaded final department meeting, the thunder of my last day was shared with not one, but two other people. It was our executive producer's birthday and another girl's last day. When the time came to talk about where we would be headed, the other girl spoke first. She began calmly and within seconds was sobbing. She talked about moving back east to be near her family and how much she would miss everyone. When it was my turn to talk, I peaked out from the person I was hiding behind and announced I was leaving to go traveling. "You shallow bitch!" someone screamed out from across the room. Hilarity ensued and I was saved from giving a longer speech about the trip I was taking without actually knowing where I was going. I was also spared having to rationalize my decision to walk away from a stable job that offered me health insurance and a 401k plan that enabled me to save hundreds of dollars.

I woke up the morning after my last day at work and completely freaked. What the fuck was I thinking quitting my job? The other Noodle had quit working about a month earlier and told me the same thing happened to her. She said it takes about a week to get used to and then you settle into your decision and realize it was the right one. I freaked less today, but when I met up with two former co-workers I admitted to them that when I looked at them, what I saw staring back was two people with health insurance.

This is all very scary and exciting. The other Noodle had this to say to ease my woes, "You can always buy health insurance, but you can't buy back your 20s. Let's go see the fucking travel agent and get going."