Category: Career

When I Retired

This is it. The jumping off point.

The edge. The letting go. The possibilities. My first solo flight.

A toast to everything that held my hand; held me together; provided security.

But this is the time of whatever, whenever.

I’ll trust my wings, my heart, my desires.

Salud!

(PS: Written nine years ago today, I sat in a candlelit bar, having walked out of work for the last time. With a drink in hand, it was a dark and rainy day. I was alone in my reverie. Tears of joy, of fear, of the unknown? Looking back, I have no regrets.

The Pure Beauty of Work Well-Loved

I just received my contract renewal for this year. As each new fiscal year approached, I always looked so forward to getting this small piece of confirmation that I will continue as the OHSU Archivist – Assistant Professor… a recognition of a job well done. I have never had to worry, but it just nails it to the wall for me. So please indulge me a bit of nostalgic reminiscing.party001

I started working at OHSU in 1998 as a student intern. Once I left for graduate school, I would return to Portland during holidays and summers from Florida and then California to keep working as a temporary part-time archive assistant. When I graduated in 2002 (after 11 years of schooling in 4 different universities), I was hired as the first professional OHSU Archivist. I was given the academic designation of Senior Reseach Assistant. In 2009 I was promoted to Assistant Professor.

I have many people to thank… first my family, who I would not have been able to get through life without my mom, my daughter, and son, Hannah and Jesse, my grandchildren, Ancel and Enora, my sister Kristi, my ex, Jack and Ramiro, and Dhillon. Those who gave me a job and kept me in a job: OHSU’s Carrie Willman Hunt, Janet Crum, Linda Weimer, Jim Morgen and Chris Shaffer and my colleague, Maija Anderson. And a person who knows me better than anyone and who has never abandoned me even when I was beyond sad, crazy and ecstatic, and helped me to hang on when I wanted to die, Tannis McKee Henry. There are so many more of you who have offered love, support, and understanding. Those of you who have cried and celebrated with me, you know who you are. I can only offer my great and undying gratitude for all that you have done for me. I will be your friend until the day that I die.

So, back to my contract. Reading it through, I come to the part that states that my contract is renewed up until September 30, 2014. I gasped as this message dropped like a small but heavy stone from the top of my head, where it first entered my consciousness, to the pit of my stomach. There it still sits.

It’s not that I didn’t know that I would be leaving. I have been planning this for the last three or so years. It’s not that I don’t want to go because I do. It’s that the realization is not just mine, it now belongs to the University. They are saying, “You are going”. I will not be turning back. My disembarkation is at hand and I will set out on a new shore. I’ve done it before and I can do it again.

I suppose that once the interviews for the new University Archivist commenced last week, I should have had a sense of my ending at OHSU… but it was my contract renewal that nailed it to the wall.

 

P.S. Occasionally I like to post a composition from a time in the past. This post is in remembrance of my career at OHSU as I was contemplating retirement, now 2 years and 8 months past. The artwork on party invitation by Hannah.