Comings and Goings...

Comings and Goings

Well, in with the new, out with the old.

Governor Patrick was inaugurated today in the first-ever outdoor inauguration. If the cooperation shown by the weather is any reflection on the fate of the Patrick Administration, Massachusetts is about to be the most successful state in the nation. It was a balmy 50, with only a mild breeze; quite a contrast to some years when we'll have had three or four feet of snow by now and the temperature is struggling to get out of the twenties.

Clicking that picture above will take you to a few shots I took today, including a first-ever look at my squalor. Err... office.

I took my own version of the Long Walk today -- handing in my resignation and severing my thirteen year association with State government. An offer came through last night for a job I'd been sniffing around for a little while, and I jumped at it.

Signing my resignation; typed on the snazzy letterhead and addressed to a boss who himself was minutes away from his own end, wasn't that big a deal. What really hit me was sitting down with the HR person and signing the official papers executing my separation from service. This has been all I've done since college and it's seen me go from an unmarried kid of 22 who thought he was a hot shit when he got a raise to $29K after three years, to a father of two with a monthly mortgage payment bigger than my original monthly salary. This has been my life and identity since adulthood, and now I'm out... Weird.

The good thing is my new gig is related to government, and I'll be working with a good group of people with whom I've worked before, and I'll be advocating for good things -- I'm not becoming a cigarette lobbyist or something... (not that I wouldn't mind that kind of money...)

Now comes the hard part. While we're at it, let's throw all the life changing stuff out there at once:

I'm wrapping up the blog as well. There's a number of reasons; the new job is going to be challenging and I'll need to dedicate the "creative" parts of my day to it, rather than the blog; too many folks I know personally know about the blog and lately I feel like I've been writing with someone writing over my shoulder, and recently, as you may have been able to deduce, I've been concentrating on things other than Kal's World. I'd rather say goodbye than let the thing linger into bolivian, as Mike Tyson would say.

So guys, I love you all. And I want to say goodbye properly to each and every one of you, so this weekend I'll put up my last will and testament, and then that'll be it. I'll still haunt your places, so when you see that "bos.east.verizon.net" that's quite possibly me. And I'll keep the blogger ID, so I can make asinine comments on your blogs (and mercilessly taunt Gino and RW when the Pats beat Chicago in the Superbowl this year).

Actually, as a proper Boston Irishman, we're going to have to turn this sucker out right. So we'll have a drunken wake this weekend, followed by the will reading. Then we shuffle this internet coil and join the blogroll invisible...

I've enjoyed each and every one of you. And now I have to go finish cleaning my office...