"Meet the new boss..."

I left my job of seven years on Thursday. I’d worked at a record store since my junior year of high school, when my mother owned the store and gave me a job there. I was raised on music, but it was through working there that my tastes fully expanded into styles and artists that I probably never would have found myself listening.
It was kind of bittersweet, saying goodbye, though I don’t really think of it as a full-on goodbye, since I’ll still shop there and visit my friends who work there. Still, it was odd to turn in my key and walk away, knowing that a long-running chapter of my life was over. I had good and bad experiences there – like at any job, I would imagine – but it seems to me that the positive outweighs the negative in retrospect. I remember crazy Christmas Eve days, dealing with all the customers, quiet summer nights rocking out to some great music, and some great friends made.
I keep playing one of my favourite lines from Almost Famous over and over in my head: one that I think truly express how I feel about leaving this job behind – “If you ever get lonely, just go to the record store, and visit your friends.”