I walk into my supervisor’s office.  “This,” I say as I pull out a chair, “is going to be a sort of awkward conversation.” I’ve been building up to this conversation for weeks.  I’ve also been putting it off for weeks.  My inability to initiate this talk has dragged me into spirals of self-loathing and driven me into hiding from friends.  Who was I to have friends?  I who was not even able to have a small, completely professional conversation with a colleague?  What the hell was my problem?  Clearly I was fit only to sit on my couch alone practicing magic tricks and mourning for a life filled with dwindling possibilities. Sometimes I can tend towards the overdramatic. Anyway–the conversation.  I pull out the chair and sit down.  “As you think about reconfiguring the team,” I begin, “you should know that I’m going to be leaving the organization at the end of the quarter.”  I wait for a response.  After a brief pause, it comes.  “Ok,” says my supervisor.  “Thanks for giving us so much notice.” And that’s it.  It’s done.  Weeks of angst, lost sleep, and tension and it’s taken less than two minutes to take the action that will reconfigure my life in a significant way. In two months, I will be without full time employment for the first time in about 15 years.  Although the actual conversation was brief, the journey towards it has been long, winding, arduous, and annoying as hell to friends who have listened to me whine about wasting my life for years.  I’ve been hiding behind the security of a job.  Now, my jobs have all been for the social good–very noble.  And they have spoken for at least 50 hours of every week, usually more,...