I am free!

The first Monday after leaving anything is stranger than people expect. No alarm, nobody waiting on a reply, and by ten in the morning a small panic that has nothing to do with regret.

Open space reads as danger to a nervous system that spent years being told exactly where to be. It takes a few weeks for the alarm to stop firing at an empty diary. The freedom was real from day one; the capacity to enjoy it arrives on its own schedule, slightly later, usually while you are doing something ordinary like buying bread on a Wednesday afternoon.