I knew that the last day of full-time employment would be a humdinger because it was the one that required technical tasks — and in that I was not mistaken. But as is so often true in life, it unfolded in a way I didn’t expect.

It wasn’t the “wiping” of the computer, the backup and removal of files, that had me flummoxed. I had been going about that fairly steadily for days. What held me hostage almost to the end was … the cloud: disentangling my work machine from iMessage and iPhoto and iTunes and all the other i’s that seek to unify our lives and terrorize us in the process. Because don’t you know that if you remove photos when you are signed into iCloud you will delete them from “all your devices.” And when you have more than 17,000 images (yes, dear reader, I am embarrassed to admit that is how many I have), which include the precious first photographs of your sweet grandchildren, even the thought of removal is enough to paralyze one for hours. 

Only I didn’t have hours — I had minutes, which were quickly ticking away. Luckily, an Apple Support person talked me down from the ledge, and after 30 minutes on the phone with her, and an hour of two of agony before and after, I was ready for the drive to Crystal City. 

There was a moment yesterday after I had solved these problems, after I had dropped off my computer, monitor and other work gear in a new and near empty office, when I had started driving home along the river, a drive I hadn’t taken in almost a year, when I felt positively weightless. And that’s what I’ll remember.