It’s a weird feeling walking around a building and knowing a secret. Maybe it shouldn’t be classified as a secret, but as something that can’t be shared until you are sure . . . sure that you are actually leaving your job at the end of the school year. But there must be a time, the right time, when the plan for the future is publicized. You look at the calendar and speculate the day it should be voiced? When will it feel right? You wonder if it will ever feel right. You know you have to tell them – your administrator, your colleagues & friends, your students & their parents. When though? That is the question that plagues you for days.

The knowledge of what will eventually unfold affects you. From this point forward every observation made while walking down the hallway comes with the realization that this is the only time you will view things from that perspective. The next time you pass those same features your point of view will have changed because you will have changed. How will you feel then? Relieved? Sad? Happy? Numb?

Time is short. Always has been, always will be. A fact too often ignored. You always think that you have all of the time in the world. You don’t. And you know that each day should be treated special, and lived to the fullest. You know that petty things are . . . well, petty, and there’s no need to quibble over the trivial. The time you have left is better spent on making a difference.

That’s what you plan to do with the remaining weeks, days, hours, and seconds. You plan to make those last few moments special, and to use time more wisely. You vow to spend those last days reinforcing the legacy that you want to leave. You don’t want to end on a low note. You want to end on a high note. You want to leave things better than you found them, to leave knowing that you are a better person because of time spent here.

So you walk down the hallway with renewed purpose. You greet those around you with an emphatic wave and smile. You stop to chitchat more often because you know that tomorrow will arrive too soon and those precious minutes of yesterday will be gone forever. And one day soon, at the end of the day you will leave this place for the last time. Oh, someday you will return to visit, but it won’t be the same. You won’t hold the same feelings or the same status. Everything will be different. You will have changed. The building will have changed. The people will have changed. And each time that you think about all of these changes you become more aware of the fact that once you leave you can never go back to the same, only forward to different.

Photo is compliments of morguefile.