Saying goodbye is hard to do

So I've done it.  I have just finished my last bit of work as the Digest Editor for Global Voices.  I'm crying....tears of joy, relief, and then of sadness.  Saying goodbye is hard to do.

For 4 years and 8 months, I have been compiling the daily digest email. Through travel (nationally and internationally), daily life drama, computer crashes, hectic schedules, etc...the digest email would still come out with almost computer-like regularity.  I would say that I was good at what I did because I did it with such efficiency that I went pretty much unnoticed most of the time.  That ability is what has made me a good assistant, a good administrative person....but I am tired of being someone who is just really good at paperwork.  I am something more.

I've thought about leaving Global Voices for months now.  After being an author, and then a board member, being digest editor really felt like it was the last toe-hold that I had in the organization.  Global Voices has been a major part of my life for the past 7 years or so...wow, can it really have been that long?  GV was an emotional and financial anchor for me.  But I need to move on.

When I first took over, David, my predecessor said that he loved doing the email but that it was becoming a burden.  At the time, I thought that he was crazy.  I would get to play on GV everyday, and get paid for it!  I understand what he means now though.  And so do the people who are near me all the time, who have been listening to me lament after my average 12+ hour workdays: "Damn, I can't go to bed yet, I still have to do GV".  The digest editor needs to compile that email with passion, with life....and I am not the person to do that anymore.

The past few months I have felt like I am standing on the edge of a cliff....at the very tip of a major change in my life.  Letting go of GV is one small foot wiggle to that change on my horizon.  I don't need the money....although it has helped me greatly paying for rent, my yoga instructor training, and even a year and a half of college for my little brother in the past.  But now....now, I am in a place where I don't need it...and the time that it will free up is much MUCH more valuable to me than the stipend I would collect every two months.

So Goodbye.  Goodbye digest.  I won't be able to completely say goodbye to Global Voices, not yet.  There is still work that I can do, that I want to do.  But it will be on my terms how I can give my time back to them....back to an organization that has given me so much.  Goodbye.