The Cardboard Box and the Thanks I Didn't Get

I walked out of Dell on my last day carrying a cardboard box, thinking: and THIS is the thanks I get?!

Six years there, a good run inside a Fortune 100 company, and I was leaving to take an exec role at a company that hadn't even closed its funding yet. Real title, real risk, zero reputation outside Dell's walls. I don't know what send-off I thought I deserved. Apparently something grander than a box and a handshake.

Within weeks, Dell was already gone from my head. Not because six years didn't matter. Because the new thing took up all the room the moment I let it.

It happened again a few years later, leaving Bazaarvoice, founding CMO, for Mass Relevance with two developers and a demo. Same feeling walking out the door. Same quiet disappearance of the old identity within weeks of the new one starting.

Twice now I've learned the same lesson the hard way: it seems impossible to leave until you do it, and then it's quickly in the rearview mirror. I'm still not sure why I needed to relearn it the second time.

What's the exit you're still treating as permanent, that would probably just become the past the moment you actually took it?