I went into work on Friday the 13th knowing it was my last day. I didn't resign, but I was resigned to allow my employment at the company come to a close.

Mostly, I felt relief. Tons of stress and emotion, which had built up over the six plus years I'd worked for the company, began to fade away. It's not all gone, but it is working its way out.

The last day was not surreal. I didn't see myself doing things from a detached viewpoint. I didn't float through the hour or so it took to write a goodbye letter to the people I worked with (and, strangely, do one small work task) waiting for it all to seem real. It was real. And the lack of emotion felt like a lot of changes in my life: all the emotion happened before the actual break.

When I left the car I'd owned for over 12 years at the dealership (surely to be sent to a junkyard and get slowly disassembled for parts), the salesman asked if I needed a moment. I said no and walked away without looking back.

The empty feeling I felt on Friday was because I was lighter. I left those heavy feelings sitting in the building, and there was no reason to take them with me.

When I got home, my roommate asked if I wanted to do anything. I said, yeah, I needed to take a little nap. About a half hour later, beers were cracked. An hour or so after that, we were at a bar with another friend. I looked around at the professionals who were trying to dump their bad work energy after a long week. I felt even lighter.

I've left a few things in my lifetime. The best job I ever had was running my own magazine. It left me with 15K in debt, a strange publishing legacy and a few boxes of old magazines. But I was ready to give up on it. People were surprised I'd stop doing something I loved to do. I compare it to being in love with someone who was the worst person in the world for you. It might have felt like the greatest love of your life, but it was also one of the most psychically damaging times, too. Letting it go allows you to move on.

So I'm moving on.

My previous job was doing layout at an afternoon newspaper. My last day was a Saturday morning (a half day, because they only put out one edition on Saturdays), which meant my manager was not there. Actually, there were a few people who shouldn't have been there, but they showed up anyway. I got a surprise going away party. I was expecting to slip out the door once the paper was put to bed, but no such luck.

Before realizing my co-workers were mobilizing for a surprise attack, I'd already stashed the grenade (a symbol of a defunct performance award I retired during my tenure) and a little action figure of a girl roller skater. The action figure always amused me because she was wearing protective pads on her knees and elbows. An action figure with safety gear, because it would be horrible if this piece of plastic fell down hard and wasn't protected.

Sometimes we protect the wrong things because we don't understand what actually hurts us.

I didn't give much of a speech at the going away party, but others did. The one statement I'll take to my grave is that, on any given day I was working, I did at least 40% of the pages sent to press. When you do the math, keep in mind there were at least four layout people working on any given day. But my manager didn't feel like I should be given a full time job (I was working 30-35 hours a week when I left), and so my work was worth half the pay of the full timers (who were, essentially, doing the same job).

The night before I was laid off on Friday (the official reason was described in economic terms, not performance or personal reasons), my band played the longest set ever. 14 songs, over an hour, almost to last call. Peppered through the set were references to my getting fired the next day (actually just hours away, as it was already Friday the 13th). It's was hilarious hearing people cheer my impending unemployment.

On Saturday, the guy at the wine shop asked how my Friday the 13th firing went. I told him it was pleasant, with no security guards escorting me to the car.

After I filled a box with personal items on Friday, my manager took me out for a last lunch. He drove, so when we got back to the office, I started to walk back to the stairway leading to my office.

Then I said, "Oh yeah, I'm done," and turned to my car.

I never looked back.

Matt Worley is on an extended vacation from the rat race.