Kedar's Log, Stardate 2009

Christopher Columbus once said, “You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore“….

AOL has been like a shore for me for the last 8.5 years! I am not sure if I am really crossing any ocean or not, but it is certainly a start of a new life. When you come to think of it, I guess you have very few absolute endings in life.. probably just one! Everything else is a new start.. so, I consider this not as the end of my AOL life but a beginning of my life @VeriSign.

And it feels surprising how fast I reached this decision to leave AOL.. especially since I always used to say that I can be here forever! There was still truth in that, except that it was a bit tainted at that time. I really loved the folks @AOL, the environment, the flexibility in everything.. I built a life for myself while working there – considering I had at least 6 important life events during that time.

During my stay, I must have survived at least 8 layoffs.. and I knew there was no way that I could’ve continued to be lucky forever! Now the question was whether to stay and continue to hope that someone else gets laid off instead of me – if it comes to that – or just leave and find a new hope.. The question was whether I can feel motivated again.. And the question was whether I was ready to start all over again (I had even lost my manager in the layoffs)… And finally, the question was also whether I could live with a survivor’s guilt which I had never felt so closely before…

Within two days, I had the answer in my mind – the answer was to get out. There was no way anyone could’ve advised me to stick it out.. I had already done that for 8.5 years! Also, I was almost getting numb and complacent about being in AOL.. yes, I was getting older and older!

In my farewell email, I accepted the possibility that life might not necessarily be better after this decision, that life might actually be more difficult outside of AOL.. but decisions are always like that.. you have to be open minded about the outcome. So I walked out of AOL on March 27th 2009.. with no plan to be back on the following Monday..

I still see so many AOL branded goodies around me – an AOL cup, an AOL frisbee, AOL pens, AOL jackets.. and it feels quite strange to be alienated from these 3 letters now…!