{"id":31737,"date":"2019-01-23T20:59:33","date_gmt":"2019-01-24T01:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=31737"},"modified":"2019-01-28T09:28:13","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T14:28:13","slug":"the-absence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=31737","title":{"rendered":"The Absence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>On Friday, a colleague of mine at work was let go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He had been with the company twenty-two years.  A dozen years ago, he was the best mentor I could have had, taking a not-inexperienced writer and turning him into a copywriter.  Then he moved into other, consumer-oriented projects, and we didn&#8217;t interact every day any longer.  Unfortunately, the company restructured to find some savings, some positions were reevaluated, and in the shuffle his was one deemed less than critical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The past three days, walking past his office has been strange and unnerving.  His nameplate remains affixed to the door.  A catalog sits open on the desk.  His framed pictures hang still on the wall.  His library of writing reference books sit on the window sill.  A stranger could be forgiven for thinking that he&#8217;s only stepped out for a moment.  Maybe he&#8217;s gone to the restroom.  There could be a production meeting in a conference room in the building somewhere.   Perhaps he&#8217;s over in the coffee nook on the north end of the building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But you haven&#8217;t just missed him. He&#8217;s not coming back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In time, someone will be in that office.  Empty offices have a way of getting claimed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Until the day, though, its emptiness stands as an uncomfortable testament to the absent person who was there and now no longer is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" src=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/IMG_20190128_085932934-1200x900.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-31757\"\/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday, a colleague of mine at work was let go. He had been with the company twenty-two years. A dozen years ago, he was the best mentor I could have had, taking a not-inexperienced writer and turning him into a copywriter. Then he moved into other, consumer-oriented projects, and we didn&#8217;t interact every day<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=31737\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;The Absence&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[229],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-work","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}