“No. It isn’t. It’s the first.”

I walk down the sterile, well-lit hallways with a plastic bag full of long, smoke-filled nights, years of sleep deprivation, some really good times and just as many bad, laughs with friends and angry words with strangers, and arrive at my locker. It is full of hurried, last minute preparation in the form of clutter. On any other night, the locker is a place of rushed activity. Tonight I can take my time.

The plastic bag containing my uniforms is over-stuffed and only barely fits into the locker for the last few hours of my last shift. Time moves forward in a blur. While on the game, I can’t help but wonder if this is the right thing to do. I have been wondering this for months and the moment is drawing ever closer. Work is light and stress-free and invites the notion that “maybe you’re making the wrong call.” I also have to remind myself that it might just be the fact I am leaving that makes things so light and stress-free. Unfortunately I am not a very sentimental person. Many of the friends I have made wish me well and offer up their best wishes and “good lucks.” I am grateful to have worked with so many genuinely good people.

Where I work there is a process when you leave where they “walk you out.” I am reminded of the scene in Shawshank Redemption where Red is walked to the gate of the prison when he is released. Red had resigned himself to die an institutionalized man. Were it not for his promise to Andy, Red would have met the same fate as Brooks in that halfway house room.

“Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’.”

I’m certainly not comparing my job to prison. It is in reality a really good job. The Shawshank Redemption is less about prison and more about breaking free and living the life you see yourself living despite the situation you find yourself thrust into. And here we are…..

“Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” — Andy Dufresne [in letter to Red] Shawshank Redemption, 1994