Yesterday was my last official day at the office and I felt completely, utterly unemotional about it. There was no trip down memory lane, no final tweaks to leave my desk tidy, no long hugs. I just dipped. Much of it probably has to do with the fact that the place I left was just a shell of itself – last month, the office that I actually worked at had been vacated during my Aotearoa trip. I left all the sentiments there. During one of last days then, Lovely and I trekked from the Waterfront Fish Market, through her old offices at DOE, and munched on hushpuppies and crabcakes in the SmithsonianAPA lounge. Her memories there are deeper than anyone else working there now. When we both wore suits and took shit more seriously, we would break from our government jobs for lunch together. We were younger, DC was a new terrain, and now I wonder if the knowledge we’ve picked up living in this town will transfer to our next journeys forward, or if we’ll leave them on the Hill. If they’ll be washed away by the next few administrations. If DC will from now on be another city that I return to regularly only to gawk at how dramatically things have changed. All the restaurants and shops that are there now but won’t be then. All the people who have left and come. Indeed, in a city as transient as Washington, D.C., moving out is a part of the local experience.