Crossroads

"Leaving a career that has defined us both professionally and personally is bittersweet. For years we eagerly awaited every Friday, yet when that final Friday comes, we suddenly long for Monday.” — Chris Clarkson, speaking to the many retirees who came before him on their last day of work.

Dear Chewey,

I have countless emotions, thoughts, and words to express within this letter, and yet I can think of nothing to write.

As you know, this is my final week at the Los Alamos National Lab. After a twenty-year career that began WAY before you were born, I am choosing to walk away, just shy of a decade before I was thinking about retiring.

Twenty years! As a long-time hiring manager, I’ll be honest…when I used to see that kind of a number on the resume of applicants to any job I was filling, I’d secretly think to myself “can this person truly break the institutionalized nature of their mind?” Now I’m asking myself that very question.

I leave the Lab, the town of Los Alamos, and, sadly, you, on my own terms. Sure, I know you’ll probably bring up reasons like my accident, my addiction, Jake and Avery moving, and if you really want to punch me in the gut, the breakup with Stevie. But the safe choice would have been to just hunker down and ride it out at LANL, which was the company that transformed who I am, and they’ve done nothing but support me over the years.

But one thing that has become glaringly, if not painfully at times, obvious about my personality, is that I simply refuse to make safe choices. Over the years I have always viewed this behavior as reckless, but in a long list of things I am trying to reframe within my mind, this reckless behavior has actually produced a number of amazing adventures. This move is just the latest amazing adventure.

I hope you can see it like this for me, and I know that even if you don’t, you will still support me.

To me, what this most feels like is that final scene in Castaway. You remember that movie with Tom Hanks and how his best friend was a volleyball? Well if you remember, at the very end of the movie, after he had gotten back home, and said a painful goodbye to his past in the form of letting his former fiance go, he takes a road trip (like I’m about to take). Somehow he makes his way to Texas, and he’s lost, so he stops at a four-way crossroads and starts looking at his map when a local woman stops and provides him some directions. Remember when the woman starts driving off, Tom Hanks looks at the tailgate of her truck and he sees that she has the exact painting of the one that kept him going all those years on the island!?! The movie ends with Tom looking at all the directions of the road and realizing that everything is going to be alright.

I think this is my crossroads moment, Chew. This is where all kinds of life transformation is about to happen - some of it bad but I think a lot of it will be good, or at least that’s what I hope.

So when I tell you goodbye on Friday morning, don’t cry. It’s not really a goodbye, but a good luck moment, because I will always come home to you. I promise. Maybe the next time you see me, it will be a happier version of me, because I know you’ve been worried.

I’ll write you as soon as I hit the train tracks, and tell you about all of my fun adventures.

Love,

Dad