Hey everyone. I really did quit my job. My last day included a well-attended lunch at a Chinese buffet, which was nice except for it didn’t summarize in a tidy hour everything bitter and sweet about leaving a job of eight years. I thought of it kind of as a birthday party for a while - everyone is paying attention to you, and you’re sort of a celebrity, but it represents the end of something, too. In that way, it’s like a graduation party, except you’re the only one graduating, and you have to be very diplomatic about the very act of graduating - almost apologetic, because it’s impolite to be as happy as I was about leaving. In the end, it was kind of like attending my own funeral, except nobody spoke.
My new job is great. They weren’t exactly ready for me on that first Monday, so they told me to show up on Wednesday and get paid for the whole week anyway. I really am not expecting to get paid for bench time ever again, but it was a great way to transition to our new life.
This first assignment is a six-week thing, which is kind of a bummer, because these new guys are way cool and there’s a lot to work on. I could easily see spending six months there, but if you start thinking like that, then you’re talking six years and dealing with the recruiters to place you somewhere else, starting every interview with “I’ve been at my current job as long as I can remember, and…”
I actually wouldn’t at all mind 6 week assignments, but the end of this one is going to mean interviewing for another one, because I’m not a known commodity. (In a year or two, this cool place can call back and say “is Dan available?” and I’ll head right over.)
Anyway, that’s work. I’ll let you know when it’s over. You and I can have lunch.
Two or three stories related to having two days off: I listened to a ton of Kanye West’s “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” Official Mixtape, and for whatever reason, really dug it. If that makes me less “hard” in your eyes, the leak of the new Queens of the Stone Age is also crazy. That band inspires me.
There’s even new They Might Be Giants out, if you’re on iTunes, because it came out there six weeks before it’ll be in stores. They call that release schedule “experimental” but I think it’s just ridiculous. The CD will come with bonus material, which I suppose at one point was delivered as “B-sides” but is referred to in official emails as “favorites from the podcast”. Their podcast is excellent, by the way - I pretty much never listen to podcasts and they deliver the goods. The record is being described by enthusiastic iTunes reviewers as their best work in 15 years and a return to form in the full-band era. I did not come to that conclusion after three listens, but I didn’t really come to any conclusion.
But back to my two days off. I decided, since
a) I wasn’t going to really see anyone for two days, and
b) since I’d gone through four Rockstars a little faster than I’d wanted to, and
c) because my silly, nothing-to-worry-about, caffeine-makes-it-worse irregular heartbeat had my attention, and
d) I was going through a big-deal life-change anyway,
HEY! why not give up caffeine. I mentioned something about caffeine withdrawal around my grandma a year ago, complaining that it’s an unpleasant two weeks, but sometimes you have to do it, and she replied that it couldn’t be worse than two or three days, if that. It was two or three days, if that. The great thing is that I’m not fumbling around blind for Diet Coke (of all things) before I’ve taken a shower or put on a shirt. I never derived much pleasure from that ritual, I just knew I had to do it or I’d take something’s fucking head off. The flip-side of being out of the cycle at the moment is that I could snap at any time. So far, I haven’t.
Next post: games, maybe.
