One Goodbye and One Hello

Saying Goodbye is Never Fun but Sometimes There's No Choice

A friend of mine was fired from his job in November. Considering how hard he worked at making the business a success, this was little short of stunning. I won't go into the identities and causes of this situation--some of you reading the blog already know them, and to be extremely fair this is only one side of the story--but it leads me to talk about departures and fresh beginnings.

I've cut ties with a local store where I did a lot of business. That's the outcome, and it's been in the works for about a month. I did this because 1) I owe my friend loyalty; 2) I don't want to support business practices that I am led to believe are not honorable; 3) I can do business elsewhere much more easily than I can replace good friends. Number 3 is sort of a subset of number 1, but you see where I'm going.

That's the departure side. The fresh beginning side? A bunch of us are going to a new place. We look forward to socializing just as we always have, realizing that we may have lost a few of our gang along the way, but figure it's a chance to ring in 2008 with something new and different and exciting.

This was written in early December but represents my hopes for a happy 2008. Here's hoping!