The best thing I heard after I gave notice at my job was, “We’ll discuss my disappointment [with you] later.”

It was told to me by the guy who works in the cube catty-corner from mine. He’s very nice, and though we’re pretty closed off in our little cubes, he’s always made an effort to say hello when we’re both in the office and I appreciate that, and I also appreciate that he’ll be one of the folks carrying the torch of the new documentation site I made with Jekyll for the company.

In all honestly I was not planning on leaving this job as soon as I have; I’ve only been working here since September. It was kind of a “dream company to work for” thing paired with a “they’re going to let me work part time and then have a full time job when I graduate” along side of “I get to continue to play with multi-stream publishing tools.”

I was putzing around with in my Dad’s office while visiting over the winter holidays and noticed that O’Reilly had an office in Boston while flipping through Javascript: the Good Parts. He was there and said I should see if they were hiring. They were, for a position that I was real interested in. I asked around and happened to have a networking connection there, too, turned out. A lot of things kind of fell into place. I’m pretty fucking pumped about it.

And while there was (I think) and honest and open understanding from the get-go at my current job about my probable departure upon graduation (as, though they like me and I like them, they do not need a full-time technical writer, and I will need a full-time job), I think everyone involved was kind of bummed that the transition happened so soon. And I don’t like giving notice. I tried to do it as best I could (and received feedback that it was “very professional”), but break ups always suck, you know?

So I gave notice and then I had a birthday.

Yippie.

I am now at the end of my twenties. I had never really thought much about thirty before but now I suppose I’ll have to. It feels weird to both be as settled as I am and to be as without my shit together as perhaps I might be, or might have been if the world still looked like it did when my parents and their parents were turning thirty. I mean, for christsakes, my parents had two kids and were about to move back across the the country when they were my age. Nuts. I mean, I get that the generational comparison thing is bullshit for a variety of reasons, but it does provide a convenient foil for certain kinds of things.

My birthday itself I spent writing (I had a thesis deadline) and then I made my favorite soup and had a nice dinner with Alia and our downstairs neighbor who is basically family at this point. The birthday weekend I also spent mostly writing (“time” was my gift this year, along with some writing equipment, coffee, a very nice snack table, and a bottle of bourbon “for after”), then went on a small bar-hopping adventure with Alia and Jonny and Diana, two very wonderful people. During this we learned that a) dive bars are cool until b) the kids start showing up around 10:30 and then c) we are too old to care to wait in a line to enter a bar. This all felt right and very wonderful.

Writing-wise, I did a lot last week. Rushed the thesis stuff to be sure, but I still feel alright about it. And I started a new story which I haven’t done really in a while, and though it’s in its garbagey first draft stage still, it’s more of the same character from the two stories I’ve gotten published, so, who knows, maybe this will be a third. (Nobody has yet taken any of the thesis-related stuff because it’s either not good or too weird and therefore a bad fit for a lot of journals. Some nice rejections, though.)

Reflections and things I don’t so much do. Or rather, I do, but then forget what I might have reflected. I don’t know, I’m older, big deal. I do not feel particularly different than I did two weeks ago, though I suppose what it represents along with all the other shit that’ll happen this year (getting married later, graduating, starting this new exciting job, etc.) is pretty cool.

So my last day is Wednesday and I’ll be sorry to go.

I’ll start at the new gig a week from then and I’ll be pretty excited.

Things keep happening and it’s pretty cool.