Late March Monte Report

Yesterday was my last official day at work. I'm both excited and terrified about what comes next. I've been packing up my stuff for weeks now, and there are boxes everywhere. Soon they'll be loaded aboard a truck and hauled up to Washington. In the meantime, I hope to spend a bunch of time out-of-doors, birdwatching and just recuperating and healing.

I received the best send-off from work imaginable -- full of warm wishes and wonderful gifts and flowers and balloons and all that. My going-away party was officially called a "See Ya Later, Monte" party, rather than a "Good-Bye" party, and it feels so good to be so welcome in people's lives. If only I could keep that in the forefront of my mind when the fight-or-flight part of my brain gets over stimulated and I lose my confidence in the idea that people would prefer a High-Maintenance-Monte over No-Monte-at-All.

In addition to getting packed and moved, my biggest challenge will be to keep myself occupied, and to avoid feeling guilty about not working. In the short-term at least, it will seem like I'm just on vacation. But I've got to think of it more in terms of recuperation. When someone has surgery, they usually can't go back to work immediately. There's a period of time when healing must take place. I'm psychology injured in a big way, and I need healing -- healing that some people might see as a disguise for avoiding work. Anyone who really knows me, however, knows I have a pretty strong work ethic. I am not one who milks the clock at all. When I'm ready to return to work, I will do so.

I've had some very difficult days lately, with suicidal ruminations being triggered by the oddest events. Hopefully this type of thing will decrease as the social stresses from my job get further behind me. In the meantime, my medication regimen is not changing. Once I'm up in Washington, I'll need to find a new psychiatrist right away. My current doctor is inclined to think that the next step is to wean myself of my current meds and then try something new -- but not until the transition to Washington is complete. The next few weeks will see that transition happen, with last goodbye dinners with all sorts of people. That itself will be a source of anxiety, as I fret over who to see and when to see them between now and my last drive off into the sunset.

Anyway, on a lighter note, there has been quite a congregation of seabirds around the wharf in town over the past couple weeks, including several unusual species, and I saw a life bird there earlier this week: a Black-legged Kittiwake. So that's 501 species on my life list . . .