The Monday after the whole your-job-is-being-eliminated chat, I met with our team lead.  She informed me that all of my responsibilities had been transferred to someone else; I stared, puzzled, wondering what I was supposed to do instead.

The answer, apparently, is to hang around the office for a month - answering questions if need be, using the time to look for another job.  Starting a blog on Open Salon (that was unplanned, but a rather nice side effect.)

I really have nothing to do, and have been coming in late and leaving early.  Nobody seems to keep track of my comings and goings as keenly as they did before; nobody seems to notice whether I'm here at all.  I go hours without receiving an e-mail, a phone call, without looking away from my computer screen.  Hours without speaking.  When I finally vocalize anything, my voice is a little rusty, a little husky - it's like when I spend a day alone, reading, and someone calls and thinks they woke me up (and in a sense, I suppose they did.)

Today, a co-worker made small talk as we stepped onto the elevator.  When we got off on the same floor and walked in opposite directions, I was halfway down the hall before she said, "Well, talk to you later,"  in an I'm-offended tone.  In just a couple of weeks, my switch has gone flickery, the bright and automatic social responses fading from disuse. 

I sometimes wonder if this is what ghosts feel like - not talking or being talked to, not really being seen, losing the habits of human interaction.  I'll be floating around here for another couple of weeks, fading a little more every day - until a couple of months later, someone will bring me up in conversation, and nobody will be able to remember my name.  Just like the guy who left in December.