-Thank you for coming.

This is to be brief.

I am now without title. It ebbed away three days ago, on waves of darvocet and daytime tv.

I have hundreds of business cards to throw away. In order to do so, I will call my (former) boss tomorrow and ask him to meet me and let me in to my (former) office so that the cards and other trivial personal effects left on the desk (not mine now, you know) can be dropped in an empty paper crate and thrown into the trunk of my car. That's a safe haven for a time. I am sure I do not wish to sort it again at home. Not for a while.

At no time did I particularly relish the title. When making the requisite/redundant introductions at corporate training functions, I'd say, "I work with student services," rather than saying, "I'm the Director of Student Services". I never cared for it--the pomposity/grandiosity--and when meeting folks outside the corporate structure, I would loosely describe myself as working in "education administration".

Those words work a lot better on forms, as well. I used them today on a doctor's office form asking for my most recent work experience. Reading it, I could interpret that question only in past-tense fashion--like it saw me coming, 72 hours out of a job.

This evening, as I pulled away plastic wrap covering the heavy things in our bedroom, I looked around at a room transformed. Just six hours earlier, there had been walls with white primer, a bed and dresser draped with plastic and floors newspapered/taped.

A friend sprayed the ceiling with "the right white" yesterday. I rolled on two coats of "swan sea" today. There it is, a new place. Still our bedroom, same shape and size, but even undone and paint-stinking, I know it will forever feel different in there. Better, I think.

A new person will sit in my office chair very soon, and likely will never have met me. S/he will move the monitor, maybe, bring in plants and photos to make it more personal and homey. Forever different.

When I am dead, maybe sooner, someone will sleep in that room, too, and surely the walls will be changed. "Navajo white" or "flax hill", maybe sea foam green, It doesn't matter.

On we go. Sure you can go home again. It will just look/feel really different.