Transition

My last day of work was on the 16th, and I just had my first week completely left to my own devices! I'm trying to get a lot of the important stuff out of the way first: registering for classes and submitting grad school paper work, signing up for Mass Health, doing a deep clean of the apartment and donating things we don't need, planning a couple of family visits coming up, and doing some thinking about wedding plans. But I did reserve a day last week to get back on the saddle with drawing. It felt great! I'm now returning to the fishing scene I had started with back in 2017. Comparing these two panels, can you see a bit of growth? The one on the right I photographed in 2018. I feel like I've learned so much in terms of style, composition, and inventing images out of my head.

Going back to the last day of work, it was incredibly bittersweet as expected. I spent the days leading up to it conducting some virtual trainings and documenting a lot of the paperwork stuff I'd been handling for future reference (nothing too interesting – mostly dense material like sending employment contracts and creating competency-based interview feedback forms). On my last day it was a race against the clock to tie things off before losing access to my email account, like discussing the fate of my 401k, recording my remaining PTO time for my personal records, and cleaning out my inbox once and for all. It's surprisingly hard to let go of the vast number of documents I've referenced for years and projects I've chipped away at, even though I am excited by my next career steps.

​In the afternoon, my colleagues set up some pastries, berries, and bubbly out on the deck at work and we had fun reminiscing and enjoying some long-awaited time in person and not in front of a screen. There is a common practice of wearing "animal print" (prints with literal animals) on our team, and without consulting, my manager and I both wore outfits with birds printed on them. One of my coworkers composed a number of beautiful (and funny!) haikus for me which I read aloud. My manager gave me a felt pennant of a gold sunrise to symbolize new beginnings, along with a red lightning bolt pin, a symbol of the Polish pro-choice women's marches (half of our coworkers are based in Warsaw and we discussed the movement in a recent team meeting). The group gifted me a custom book stamp ("From the Library of Hannah Dunscombe") and beautiful bound book from Etsy that collected photographs from my time at work and library due date cards filled out by hand with well wishes.

​I spent the following day pasting in a box load of additional work photos and memorabilia that I had stored up, so much so that the book is now practically bursting at the seams! Assembling all of those memories and preparing myself to treasure the happy times for years to come was such a lovely way to balance out my sadness of leaving behind some of the greatest coworkers I've ever had the pleasure to work with.

Also I did end up getting into Simmons! Three of my former managers very kindly wrote letters of recommendation for me as well, which helped me get some extremely helpful scholarships too :)

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Uncle Pat & Aunt Bobbie / Great Grand-Aunt Margaret

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Smoggy sunset