On my last day at work

I woke up smiling this morning. I may have even hopped around my bedroom a bit. (I have no new bruises or scrapes, though, so I can't prove that the hopping actually happened. It could have been a dream.)

I've already been through the first 4 Stages of Self-Induced Change (excitement, doubt, terror, sadness/nostalgia) and have been sitting in the impatiently-ready-to-move-on stage for several months now. Usually when something comes to an end I'm still in either the terror or sadness/nostalgia stage, and then my journal entry that night is full of soul-searching questions and/or an overload of sentimentality.

Rarely do I approach a new chapter in life feeling this prepared. I was excited to turn off my Google news alerts and stop following the health IT blogs I've collected over the past three years (I'm not even sad that I won't be reading HIStalk anymore). I cleaned out my desk yesterday thinking about where I should recycle all of my paper rather than all the memories I was tossing away.

In fact, the thought at the front of my mind isn't that my last minutes are slowly ticking away: I'm too busy thinking about how BYU's WCC tournament run is going to go (I think BYU can totally win it, in case you wanted my opinion). And when I'm going to have time to take my car in for an oil change. And the fact that I didn't utilize my spring break the way I was supposed to and only managed to complete half the catch-up homework I planned to do (which isn't bad, really).

It's a little weird being this mentally prepared for a change, actually. So prepared that there's no need for final reflection or conflicting emotions--just the driving need to officially finish up this chapter and move on.