For this post I decided to do something sneaky. I’m using wordpress’s ability to schedule posts for future publishing. This post will be published at the same moment that I should be starting a meeting with my manager.

As I said last night, I’m making it official today (right now!). After this the secret’s out and I’m officially doing flips without a safety net. All I have is hope & faith that things will go smoothly these next few weeks. If not, I’m definitely SOL.

As of this moment, I am officially, publicly, and in writing quitting my job. Life 2.0 in 3… 2…

There’s been a slight change of plans. My hand’s been forced, but only slightly.

Late last week I was part of a hallway conversation at work. Involved was my friend Ryan, my director Daniel, and myself (obviously). Ryan was discussing the goings-on of selling his house and brought up the fact that I sold my house in 24 days using the same realtor he’s using. “Oh, you’re selling your house?” Daniel inquired.

“Well if all goes smoothly, I’ve already sold it. It’s under contract right now” I replied. The conversation continued on, the focus remaining on Ryan’s adventures in realty. Then Friday afternoon came and my manager stopped by my office to talk to me. “Daniel, came to me and told me you were selling your house. He was thinking you might be quitting. He asked me to find out and if you were planning on quitting what we could do to keep you.”

That was flattering. But way too late. Luckily for me I had already planned on leaving early to go to court and take care of a speeding ticket. “Why don’t we discuss this Monday,” I said, ” because I’ve gotta leave in a couple of minutes.” And that was that. I bought myself two days to think about how to answer the question. I’ve been lying about my plans for many months now to everyone at work. But this felt different.

I think the fact that I’ve been planning on giving my notice this Tuesday changed things. Why lie today and then drop the truth an instant later? So I’ve decided that tomorrow morning I’ll make my intention to quit official. My fancy resignation letter is already written and I’m not going to redo it. So I’ll give it Monday morning and explain that I was planning on turning it in on Tuesday. July 28th will remain my final day of work and anyone reading the letter will have to use a smidgen of imagination and pretend it’s Tuesday when they read it.

So there we go. In less than 24 hours the metal restraints will come down and lock me into my seat. My ride on the roller coaster will be as official as I can make it. As long as my buyers don’t derail the train this baby’s set to launch July 31, 2009!

Myself, I like the ride with loops…

Final Fortnight

Maybe it’s my never-ending immaturity or possibly my bottomless stupidity but I decided that I wanted my two-week notice to be more than just a boring “I’m quitting in 14 days.” I decided that I would make it uber-formal, kinda like a wedding invitation.

I told a friend about my idea. I told him that one of the things I was going to do was write out all the dates using only words, not numerals (again, like in wedding invitations). As we sat chuckling about it he suggested that I use some esoteric dating system, like the position of the stars or something crazy like that. Crazy enough, it just, might, work. So I wrote out my first draft. I liked the way it came out, but decided it needed a bit more. That’s when I got the idea of making my resignation letter look older, like a scroll or something.

After some brief online research I found a few recipes for aging paper. I went and bought some resume paper and aged my first piece. It came out awesome. The next day I printed out several copies of my notice. A notice should be signed, but since part of the aging process included getting the paper wet I couldn’t sign it in ink and then age it; nor did I want to sign it afterwards as I thought the signature would look too “new” compared to the rest of the document. The handiest solution I could come up with was to photocopy my signature onto the notices. Signing a blank sheet of paper in the correct spot and photocopying it onto the entire batch worked perfectly.

The next evening I went home and sent my resignation letters back in time. I screwed up the first two trying out some things, but I think my third attempt went swimmingly. Taking a lighter and sinjing the edges finished off the look. The final touch will be a piece of ribbon tied around it after I roll it up nice & tight. Click the thumbnail above to see a full sized (though censored) copy of my resignation letter.