The joy of joblessness/ To say what one thinks, instead of what one should say

My last day at work was a breeze. At the coffee shop upstairs, it was also my favourite barista's last day. She's quitting to spend more time with her children. She gave her special customers free coffees and I was pleased to be among them. I'll miss her and the mean-faced fruit lady and the crazed Indian stall owners who put so much salt and MSG in their food that you can lose a litre of body fluid simply by eating lunch there. And then, there's the lovely woman across the road, who because I can't speak Mandarin, communicates with me in sign language. We've developed our own charades for noodles/tofu/vegetables, no meat, no fish. Two months ago, when I got to her stall, she smiled, nay beamed and handed over a laminated menu with an all-new VEGETARIAN section. How cool is that? And now I've gone and left, bah, ungrateful wretch that I am.
I've had such a good run here -- loved my work and met some incredible people whose stories will always stay with me because of the madcap humour and quiet grace with which they handled not-so-great-news from doctors. And yet I feel like my work here is done. Last night I slept a whole nine hours for the first time in months. I slept like the dead.
I have learned some very wonderful things in these last three-and-a-half years. Yesterday, as I was cleaning up my desk, I found a small piece of paper given to me by a woman I interviewed a year ago. It sums up some of the most important things that I have learned to do (lie), actually, I'm still trying very hard to learn these lessons.
"To see and hear what is there, instead of what one should see and hear. To say what one thinks, instead of what one should say. To feel what one feels, instead of what one should feel. To ask for what one wants, instead of waiting for permission. To take risks on one's behalf, instead of choosing to be safe." — Virginia Satir