C'est la vie

Wed, Sep 28, 2022 at 8:25 AM

Jason Sheehan <[email protected]>

To: Samantha <[email protected]>
Cc: Human Resources <[email protected]>, Wellbeing Officer <[email protected]>, Finance <[email protected]>

Bcc: My Love <[email protected]>

Dear colleagues,

I find myself at an impasse.

In less than five minutes the day is set

to irritably begin.

Five more ticks, a flickering wick, then my flame will be extinguished.

Please don’t jump too alarm, this is no epitaph.

This is the measure of strife that is rife in my soul.

There is a hole.

And so, I resign.

I’d like to say there is never a dull day,

but i can no longer delay.

I cannot assuage the rage of my stay in this cage

here

at Pyxis.

Unable to speak,

empty of breath,

empty of vitality,

calloused fingers and a keyboard so brutally wracked with the attack of my fingers, clack! Clack! Clack!

This is resignation,

not without contemplation.

I mean not to be bitter. I shall not litter this letter with slander, for my character is grander than to belittle a bystander, in

each

of

you.

But, this shall be my last email working for this organisation,

this cacophony of catchcries and sighs and lies.

I ask myself, what should life offer?

What should comfort my discomfort in this plummet I have felt?

Who is the culprit?

Here is the truth.

In the last three years I have worked in sustainability.

An arbitrary word for our contrary herd.

Through a fire, a flood, a pandemic, from obscurity,

without security, in an absence of maturity, in a workplace that thrives on its own impurity.

I have a planted a tree

ten-thousand times,

in hearts, and minds, and hands.

At Pyxis our pride is the point of the needle.

A compass in a time with demands on our lands.

But…

Temperatures have risen in the fury of the many,

inaction, dissatisfaction, a political catchpenny.

Here we are again and again,

offering tired words in the ears of each woman and man.

A lurching army

unsure

unsteady.

The focus has shifted and twisted,

from innovation,

creation,

imagination,

to the hardline lead of profit in our

not

for

prophet.

When Sara when on maternity leave,

When Alex lost belief,

When Timo, John, and Hannah too, numbers abundant, made redundant,

When Taylor skipped from team to team,

When Sage went to Japan,

When Lola found a love abroad,

And reduced our tiny clan.

I have seen many leave, their work I heave upon my own.

And here I am, the last man standing.

Alone.

So, what should life offer?

I have been offered

by life itself

the glorious gift of recognition.

To recognise, before demise, the impact of attrition.

The room to exhale.

That is what I need.

The room to exhale.

That is what I plead.

The room to exhale,

is what I will seed.

The room to exhale.

My comfort. My truth.

My offer,

freely.

In the sense of recompense, the scent of cents is fleeting.

Financial independency is a decency I have not been afforded, my treatment sordid, unrecorded, reordered, and is, in truth, defeating.

It matters not.

No more.

The room to exhale,

That is what I feel now.

As puncturing words pour to this page, I do not feel dismay.

I do not feel alone. I do not feel a stray.

The room to exhale is mine once again,

a right I had forgot.

To exhale, inhale, and breathe once more,

untie this soul’s deep knot.

I thank you for what this means, and also for your time.

I thank you for how it all began,

for your hopes

and dreams,

even though a paradigm.

It is not your fault,

it never was,

I do not cast out guilt.

Instead I tilt

my hat.

The glorious gift of recognition,

my comfort,

towards ambition.

I must remark here upon the good,

my partner, my children, for all that I have stood.

Their patience, their love, their merry ways,

their love, unending, eternal.

I am awoken,

open,

unbroken.

It is for them I make this stand

to what I do not know.

I have arms spread wide, unbound, prepared, to venture forth once more.

I am liberated, cleansed,

of the stress

in its mess

without finesse

inside.

There is such a spark of joy in me,

room to exhale,

my comfort,

my heart,

my pride.

Sustainably yours (for 38 more seconds of chores),

Jason Sheehan

Former Sustainability Officer,

Pyxis.