My last decent headshot. Taken in 2016.
I officially detatched from my former employer last night. The last gossamer string is gone.
It was a ugly separation and a bitter divorce, and it happened five years ago.
The context is pathetic and I’ll keep it brief. I was in a car accident in 2017. Serious concussion, about as bad as you imagine when you think TBI in civilian life. I still move my head like a ’50s typewriter paten when I read. I couldn’t work for a year, so of course my productivity tanked. I can’t talk about the details of what came next because of an NDA. Two years after the accdent, I packed up my office and prepared for life as an independent scholar.
All that remained was a paper appointment that gave me a presence on the website but no way to be contacted, which is problematic because the Ford book is only getting more attention. Late last year, I decided to build an author’s website (this website, ‘smatter of fact), and boom: epiphany. I’m free. In a good way.
That realization was the beginning of the real end. As my website came into existence, it occurred to me that I no longer needed any connection to academia, could finally hit send on the resignation email. Last week my oldest daughter threw me the retirement party I never got, and my family—the five people for whom I commuted 240 miles per week for twenty years—ushered me out of that chapter of my life and into the next. (I’ll talk about the career impacts of having four children in another post.)
This morning I was telling all of this (and the unpublishable details) to a friend who knew only the bare bones of my employment history, and she had one thing to say. You’re angry about this.
I knew that already. Just hearing back from the new boss upset me, made me cry.
But today I’m writing about it for the first time, and that feels therapeutic.
