STATIONARY

This has been and continues to be a most interesting year.

While its been full of very significant changes, the simple lack of changing companies for me has been quite interesting.

I have in the past changed companies or sites (as a contractor you don't stay in place for very long) every two years or less. Sometimes it has included a move to a new area other times just a change in location of the same area.

Two months ago, my closest friend here took a job in Texas, packed all her shit and was gone in 3 weeks. I think I mentioned before, this was the first time I had been among those left behind. It's always been me leaving.

This week, a good friend with which I work, turned in his resignation, cashed in his last two weeks on vacation, packed his shit and was gone in about 40 minutes. (He'd been actively trying to leave since I first arrived.. I am surprised he managed to make it out the door without getting on the paging system and giving the entire site a crash course on his perspective).

..and I am still there. It just seems so strange.

My job has changed, the people I socialize with during the day changed, just based on convenience. The people I work closely with day to day are generally the people I didn't work closely with previously, and the people I worked closely with prior I barely deal with these days.

I still see my old crew around the facility, but I don't have much time to visit with them. I make it upstairs to visit infrequently at best due do to the sheer amount of work I am engrossed in daily.

I'm on the outside, looking into a group I used to be on the inside of and I suspected it before, but now I can clearly see that groups disfunctionality and the fact that it is actively being set up to dry up and fade away. Fine for the necessity of a reorg, but pretty shitty when you consider there are actual people involved.

I'm watching people like myself move around within the company, while others are packing up to leave the company. I am see the corporate priorities change while their method of execution continues to stay the same. I am watching the people I work with grow and changes with me.. people having babies, kids starting school, the loss of loved ones, and the aspirations of people starting to change due to time.

This is all stuff I never really thought about before because I was never really in a stationary location from which to observe the things around me.

I'm finally paying attention to what is going on around me I guess and its all much more interesting than I would have guessed.