Personal/Professional

I am struggling emotionally right now. At work.

Last week, our team lost a very important player, and it has been a much larger emotional hit than I could have anticipated. She was more than a colleague–she was a friend. While I hope she will continue to be a friend, it simply cannot be the same as sitting next to each other every day.

She probably never realized how much her friendship meant to me, how much I looked up to her and valued her advice and guidance. She has helped me deal with some big life challenges, as well as many little ones. She introduced me to Rick Steeves before I went to Germany and told me how to care for the butcher block counter tops in the house I'm buying. She helped me figure out how to handle family drama and gave me perspective and condolence on silly arguments with my husband.

And I did my best to be there for her, make her laugh when needed, be a listening ear, provide the best advice I could offer.

Maybe it was a friendship of convenience and circumstance, but that doesn't make it any less real. She has been a constant presence in the next cubicle for the past three years. And now she's gone.

Frankly, I'm mourning.

But the beautiful thing about this feeling is that I know, more than I ever have, that I bring my true self to work. Although it may not be visible to everyone, it's here. It's sitting in a cubicle on Sunday afternoon trying to be productive when all I can do is feel the void next door.

I've said it before, and it's worth repeating: Your personal and professional selves cannot be truly separated.

I hear this constantly in the context of social media: "I don't want to mix my personal and professional lives." How can you avoid it? You spend so much of your life at work that it necessarily becomes a part of you. You are your work, and your work is you.

If you have ever felt the sadness that I feel now over the departure of a coworker, then you know there's something to this. You know the two selves are not really two selves at all.

Why do we cling so dearly to the separation? What do we think there is to gain? The idea that we're emotionless automatons when we come to work is simply a view that large corporations perpetuate so they can treat us as "human resources." Buying into that paradigm reinforces the idea that we're replaceable cogs.

That's not the world I want to live in. I choose a world where my work is part of me, and I feel it deeply when I error, when something gets off track, when someone I care about leaves. In turn, I bring the whole of me to the work–my passion, my enthusiasm, my drive to be better, not for a check but for the joy of improvement. I feel the success as potently as the failure. It gives each day meaning.

This will be a hard week–two weeks–month–but I am glad for that. I'm glad I have the ability to feel this deeply. At work. Because work is a part of me. And I give myself freely to work.