Jack and Ian, Today was my last day (by choice) at the Idaho National Laboratory, a job I held for over six years. It was a rough day - and I want tell you about it. A year earlier, as you remember, we moved away from Idaho to the great state of Maine. We drove for five days in the middle of winter - but that's a story for another letter. What's important is that I went from hybrid to remote worker, and that INL decided to follow the federal governments path and issue a Return to Office (RTO) order. This forced my hand and I ended up ending my employment with them after six years, when I'd planned a much longer tenure. INL decided to fly me over to Idaho for my last week, and so I got to have my last day in person. My last day wasn't very long, I only had one scheduled meeting that morning. It a meeting that will forever stay in my brain, and which had the same affect as being in multiple meetings all day. You see, I had built a tool for the lab called DeepLynx. I started it, alone, six years ago, and had dealings with it almost every day since. It was a web application which I programmed (eventually together with a team) and which become an integral part of the department that grew up around it. We used it in a large amount of projects - and it was the reason I was able to progress up the promotion ladder and eventually become a software architect. It’s still hard for me to post public links to what I’ve worked on at least part-time for the last 6 years. I think that’s because there is a lot of history in this application - a lot of mistakes, learning moments, and just pure hare-brained schemes. It took me 4 of those years to come to the conclusion, with the help of a fantastic therapist, that I don’t need to tie my worth to a program I wrote and that I had every right to be able to feel disappointed in my work. I forever own the code and regret I wrote - **but** I also own all the learning, progress, and hard work that’s represented by this repository. I can say it is not my proudest work - but it is mine, and I am who I am today because of my experience with it and the team who helped build it. For that final meeting the team lead asked me to share my lessons learned over the years of working in the department and with the application. I didn't even have an idea of where to start. The night before the meeting I still hadn't figured it out, and lay awake stressing about leaving an impression which would help guide the team in a direction beneficial to our customers and themselves. Here are my raw notes: - Hard to know what to say, stayed awake tossing and turning trying to figure out what to share with the team about lessons learned - You are all talented engineers - and the technical lessons learned have been shared with many and often . - When I’m done talking, I’ll be stepping out of the room and completely off the DeepLynx team - and that’s hard.  - Over 50 years ago this year, Kieth Jarret produced the most sold jazz piano album ever made. Tell the story - I have heard some of the most beautiful music played on the piano that is DeepLynx from this team. - It’s time to build a new piano - and I know that the music you all will produce will be even more powerful. I wish you luck in your endeavors and am always open to talk tech. It went more or less according to those notes - but what I didn't expect was the incredible surge of emotion that came long with sharing my hopes with the team. What I want to say with this letter is the realization I came to while fighting my emotions in front of a large team of my peers: **that it's ok to feel sad about a change in your life, even when it's an overall positive change and meant to protect yourself and your family.** I was leaving friends behind. I was leaving one of the biggest things that I'd ever built behind. I was leaving my shame and regret about it behind - but also the pride and sense of accomplishment in that something I built had lasted that long and had such a big impact. My gut reaction was to ignore that - focus entirely on the future - but now I realize that's not healthy. You need to sit with your feelings - experience them and let them shape who you are and who you want to become. I'm letting my shame, sadness, and regret gently encourage me to avoid the mistakes I made over the last 6 years. I'm letting my pride and good memories buoy me up and provide a positive outlook on an uncertain future. These shifts in thinking don't come easy - but I encourage you to make an effort to do it. My sadness and emotion, my tears and barely controlled sobs afterwards, eventually broke into a sense of optimism and happiness - and I don't think that contrast would have been possible without reflection. Remember I love you both.