It's Scary Until It's Not

A love letter to fear

I have a really important meeting tomorrow—a meeting that could quite possibly change a whole lot of things. And for some reason, all I can think about is my last day at Condé Nast.

The hallways were empty. I maybe saw one other person from a different magazine walking through the once overcrowded cubicles, and of course my coworker who was always, always at the office. Other than that, it was a ghost-town compared to what this place once was.

I started organizing the packages that had piled up over the last six months. Six months—that’s how long I hadn’t stepped foot inside the building that I walked into five days a week for two years. Six months since the world had shut down.

It wasn’t my last day, not yet. That would come in a few weeks, but I was in town to move out of my Meatpacking studio apartment and to do this—clear out my desk, sort my boss’s mail and packages, and say goodbye to the place I’d once dreamed of working at that I had now resigned from.

Scenes from my last day “in office”. The 2020 calendar on my desk is bleak.

Two years prior, on the day of my first interview, I sat across the street at the Marshalls soaking up the AC—and trying not to shit my pants—because I’d arrived 45-minutes early (obviously) and was starting to sweat through my shirt from how nervous I was. Three interviews for one job in one day—a story for another time.

The fear hadn’t settled, not even for a moment. Not since I had gotten a call from an HR manager asking if I wanted to come in for an interview to be the Assistant to the Editor-in-Chief at Architectural Digest. The fear was so palpable, I admittedly almost said no.

Walking into the building for my first day of work on October 8, 2018.