The following is a copy of the farewell email I sent to my friends and colleagues at my last employer.

Hello!

I’ve read a ton of farewell messages here and in the companies before. Some I read carefully and let myself wallow in their poignant undercurrent, some I just glance over quickly and bid a mental ‘all the best’.

Yet some I read and wonder who this guy even is. But now that it’s my time to be that guy, I can only offer my sincere apologies if you don’t know me, or barely know me, or didn’t care if I resigned, got abducted by aliens or was turned into a werewolf.

And I wanted to apologize to the people that I know well if I didn’t tell you already in person about this (I tried my best catching up with as many as possible) instead of this last hour email.

And while I wanted to avoid the clichéd motifs you see in all farewell messages, I can’t seem to produce anything but that. After all, how original can a farewell be? No matter how you put it, a bye is a bye.

Or not.

I mean, sometimes when you say bye, you mean ‘please go jump off a cliff and never come back’ but sometimes when you say bye, you mean ‘until next time’ and wishes that your paths cross again.

So my bye is of the latter kind – I sincerely wish that our paths cross again.

And I wanted to thank all of you for touching my life over the last 4 years in many pleasant ways. To my friends, I value your friendship, to my colleagues, I value your association and if we barely knew each other, I certainly wanted to get to know you better. And I wish all the very best for you.

So, until next time, good bye.

Luc