My former cubicle. Two screens for my company laptop, and one for my CG workstation.

Today was my last day with current employer, Truestone, which contracts with the Feds, primarily the Coast Guard. They provide many different kinds of IT and electronics services, as well as document preparation and process development. I spent the last year and a few months working for the C4ITSC FSD (that’s “Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Information Technology Service Center, Field Services Division.” Whew! No wonder they like acronyms over there.) doing technical writing and editing of IT business process guides. Each guide was also published online on our intranet site which I helped design, build and maintain. All in all, I have to say, it was an interesting gig and I learned a bunch. I also met some great people.

But the uncertainty of contract work, particularly when the client is undergoing substantial reorganization, was hard to shake off. It seemed to me that there was a reasonable chance this project would not continue in the same way, if at all, after the task order expires this summer. So, when another opportunity suddenly appeared, with new challenges and new things to learn, and new interesting people to learn from, it just seemed like I had to go for it.

Writing can be solitary work. While there was interaction with the subject matter experts on the Coast Guard side, and some collaboration within our company team, there was plenty of time spent alone at the computer. And for most of this 15 months, we had a very quiet, mostly empty office near Jack London Square. It has only been in the last three and a half months that we moved in with the Coast Guard in the Federal Building in Oakland.

So, the weird part is how it already feels kind of sad to be leaving. People were pretty darn nice up there on the 7th floor. It really kind of feels like I’m leaving people I have known for much longer. I’ll just have to try and stay in touch and head down there for lunch every once in a while.

It was also really nice being a regular BART commuter, too. I hardly drove the ol’ Subaru at all for the last few months, and never to work. I almost felt grown up, wearing a button up shirt, carrying bag, and riding the commuter train. That’s pretty much over now. I plan on biking to the new job as religiously as I rode the BART to the last one.

So that’s that, the end of a chapter. Coming up is the beginning of the next.