Prior to beginning a new job at a magazine within the same publishing company for which I have been working for four years, I used all of my remaining vacation days and checked into a favorite inn in Williamstown.
As I drove to the inn, which is surrounded by 200 acres of fallow cornfields and the undulating profile of the Berkshires, which has become so familiar that I think of it as a friendly body in repose, I was feeling relief that a new job had been offered to me. But I also was mightily unsettled by the realization that everything and everyone familiar to me over the last few years had already been taken away.
I have used this inn before as a conduit between jobs. More than a dozen years ago, when I had been forced out of an unpleasant job - pressured to leave by a new editor who wanted her "own people" - I remember closing the door to my room at the inn and sitting cross-legged on the floor with my coat and gloves still on so that I could listen to the silence right away.
There had been so much metaphorical noise at the job that what I wanted now was the actual noise of silence. That sound of stasis nourished my then-wounded self-confidence.
Another time, I had come to the inn after beginning to realize that a person I was falling for was not falling for me - so I went to what I knew was a beautiful, familiar landscape that brought me comfort and diversion.
Now, I had come to the inn to celebrate the beginning of a new job that had been offered to me unexpectedly - a raise, new duties, a magazine whose subject matter was bigger and more to my liking than the previous publication.
For the several days I spent at the inn, I followed virtually every designated area forest trail I could find - ones that were called The Oak Loop, The Stone Bench, The Pond, The Caves, The Meadow; I even would have taken one called The Parking Lot had I come across it, I was so determined to find a place where I could reflect and calm down, distance myself from the sense of doom that comes with a new job and new colleagues.
But no matter how arduous or lengthy the forest trails were that I followed on the chilly, invigorating fall mornings, I was never able to distance myself sufficiently from my daily life and my professional role in the city where I lived. While kicking through the ground cover of dry leaves, I would hear the increasing turbulence of a Berkshire stream or the thin wind leading to a summit and be excited by the impending vista, but my mind was occupied, ultimately, with ideas for the articles I would need to assign, the overflowing in-box awaiting me, and the growing stack of e-mail subject lines I would need to click my way through.
I was constantly stopping to sit on fallen tree trunks or perch on the railings of WPA-era bridges to jot down more ideas and the names of writers I needed to contact, the questions I needed answered about office procedures, and conferences I thought I should attend.
Deep in the shade of quiet forests, I had already started the new job without even taking my place at an assigned cubicle with skyline views.
Even at the communal breakfast table at the inn, I was passing around my new business card to my fellow guests, inviting them to look me up next time they were in town and near my office.
One guest, an artist who lived on Boston's North Shore, promised to send me a portfolio of her work with the hope that I might be able to write an article about her for the magazine; she left a handwritten note on my windshield the day she and her husband left, wishing me luck on the new job.
I usually arrived at the breakfast table before anyone else had gotten up, and I would use the time to flip through an array of magazines for ideas and inspiration.
I have changed jobs enough times in my life to know that those days in between an old job and the start of a new one are among the most poignant you can experience. Those days off are more than a vacation. They are states of limbo where you really don't have a job, where your professional identity is on hold.
You may have the new business cards to hand out and you may already have learned the boiler-plate definition of the job and title to recite to people you meet, but because you have not yet begun the job, you cannot know what it will entail. Vacations from a job you know well are days where you can be content knowing that the familiar routine will resume. Days spent between an old and new job are ones tinged by anticipation, a complicated feeling as much about excitement as about self-doubting (will I able to do the new job, you find yourself asking).
I am grateful that I went to one of my favorite places in the world, the northern range of the Berkshires. The day I arrived, I picked a novel at random from the shelves of the inn - a 1970 book called "Avery's Mission" by J.I.M. Stewart - and was absorbed by the story, and I visited one of my favorite paintings, "The Sleigh Ride" by Winslow Homer, at the Clark Art Institute.
I ate dinner every night at a restaurant called Hobson's Choice and, by my second visit, was on a first-name basis with the waitresses.
I bonded with fellow guests and we exchanged phone numbers and addresses to keep in touch.
I know that it will be many months before I return to the inn, but when I do, I suppose the new job will have morphed into just my regular job and I will simply be spending some vacation days there, ready to return to work and colleagues I understand and know.
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