Sunsets are proof that endings can be beautiful — Buddha

It is Monday morning.

As someone who wore a groove in the carpet between my office, the coffee room, and the restroom for almost 20 years, people around me knew I was served well-done long before I recognized the signs. In truth, for the last year and a half, my cheeky response to the question, “How are you doing?” was an earnest, “Medium-well.”

If you are feeling just a little crispy around the edges and perhaps fear that your warm pink center is slowly shrinking, here are the signs I now recognize as an indication it’s time to hop off that grill.

Want to read this story later? Save it in Journal.

Other people can see the tattoos from your lengthy indenture.

You’ll begin to hear people say things like, “Boy, you’ve worked here a really long time.” At some point in the past, they would have added something to the effect, “You must really like it!” People have stopped adding the second part some time ago. You’re drying out inside like $3 Las Vegas sirloin when you receive the impression that your tenure gets leered upon more like a 100-year-old turtle and less like an aging golf pro still harvesting ahhs at the Masters.

Regardless of the employee turnover, the fecund imaginations have long since departed.

You’ll know it when you cherish the opportunity to talk to consultants. Someone, anyone that has something fresh to say. You no longer feel as if it’s a violation of the Geneva Convention to be sequestered in the consulting church of Our Lady of the Obvious Conclusion. You’ll know that your grill marks are as deep as healthy will permit when you drink in the latest consultant speak as from a broken fire hydrant in the desert. You might also look at those fresh faces with envy, silently resentful of their short-term engagement.

When your primary value proposition becomes “domain knowledge.”

At this point, you spend most of your days as a speed-bump for stupid. You are invited to meetings more as a historian of failed reform attempts than the well of innovation your now-jaded outlook had a few years ago. It is here that you discover, ever slowly, that you might be the only one in opposition to certain doomed-to-failure plans and your waning enthusiasm is starting to give you a reputation as a nay-sayer.

More pessimist than a soothsayer, your victories are stifled ideas, hopefully, delivered with kindness for well-intentioned souls.

When you stop raging against the dying of the light.

Recognizing the potential peril of your perceived negativity, the curvature of your neck begins to support a position of “head down.” Having commonly prayed, “God, I don’t want to do this anymore,” you realize that your hard-earned salary over the years provides quite a few creature comforts of which you have grown quite fond. Let your prayers be answered but in your own time. You then begin to dabble in the sycophantic arts. Not having truly plotted a Plan B, you ratchet down your enthusiasm for saving the company from itself.

No longer emboldened by your seniority, in subtle ways you begin to cow to the present power structure to ensure your inevitable exit is voluntary. It is here that you begin trading happiness for dollars. This is the dawning age of your obsequiousness.

When your work-wife or husband suspects you have thrown in the towel.

Finally, you know you are the burnt-end side dish at the BBQ when your ride-or-die work soulmate comes straight-out and says it. It starts with them suggesting a vacation, which is off-putting because part of the reason you can still manage to make a meeting is that a “fun” person will be there. You then recognize that you are doing more immiserating than commiserating with your friend. Perhaps that person has even grown just perceptively distant, which fuels your nascent paranoia.

Far and few-between have gone the days of mocking “Rocky” in finance. Your friend can feel the rip currents of nihilism forming around your feet, and still wants to keep their job.

If you’re brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with another hello — Paulo Coehlo

Are you well done?

If your journey has been long, you have, no doubt, in some extraordinary measure done well. Some of these signs are not categorically apocalyptic for your current station. Each of those mental milestones suggests an opportunity to arrive fresh with unbridled enthusiasm next Monday morning. A recognition that a fresh perspective might confirm your weathered nest is indeed your home. Whether this is a wake-up call to shed the doldrums and seize opportunities unseen or a thunderous call to adventure free from your shackles, is a personal question worth sober consideration.

As Dr. Seuss said succinctly, “Oh, the places you’ll go!”