My last day at my shitty, shitty job.

Well, this is it. My last day.

Yesterday I cleaned up my cubicle. I've never enjoyed cleaning, but I was having a fantastic time. The rest of the day was spent filling out paper work, revising contracts, and talking to the accountant here about what I need to do for tax purposes. With all this tax talk, I wonder if I've gotten in over my head. I'm not good with numbers or budget or keeping receipts or anything. I've talked to a couple people around the office about it, and the opinion is basically this: ripping the government off and fudging your taxes is much easier than doing it the right way. Until they make it easier to do things correctly, do them the best you know how and claim ignorance if the IRS comes knocking. Sounds like good advice to me.

I also burned some stuff to CD that I want to keep around as back up for when I'm working from home. I cleared off as much as I could, including personal stuff that's collected here throughout my year of working on this computer. People have put dibs on all my stuff, so they kept coming around yesterday to take my scanner, zip drive, monitors, one of my other computers, and whatever other cool toys I had laying around.

Today was the last all employee meeting I will ever attend for this company. I was shocked at what was revealed: August was a profitable month for Iona. The first profitable month since I've been here. Way to go out with a bang. The owner and president of the company made it a special point to announce my last day and thank me for quitting before he had to start firing. As I looked around the room at this all employee meeting, I couldn't help but think back to what it was like at my FIRST all employee meeting. There were many more people. So many that we couldn't even all fit in the conference room. When I signed on to Iona, I was the 48th employee they had. I'm leaving Iona with 33 remaining employees. That's a big jump. I joined a multimedia team here that was 12 people strong. I'm leaving it with 4 remaining multimedia production people. Weird.

One of my supervisors came up to me the other day and said he knew about the lunch that was planned as my last lunch here, but someday next week, he, Jim, and Shane (the cool kids of Iona I speak so highly of all the time) are going to take me to a "real" lunch at CC. CC is Iona talk for Club Cabaret, which is a strip club just outside of Peoria. I don't know if that invitation will ever pan out, but if they really do invite me, I'll certainly go. I mean, not for the strip club, just to strengthen the bonds I have to Iona of course.

I'll have to apologize for the lengths of my posts these days. I realize they're long and pretty self serving. But what can I say? I'm taking a big step, and it's weighing heavily on my mind right now. Will I make it as a freelancer? Will I have to stop eating? Will I survive well on a schedule where I don't know when my next paycheck is coming, and from where? How will I find business?

Ah, lots of questions to be answered.

I'm still confident in my decision. Even in the face of all the risks, I know it was right for me. Even knowing that it's possible that I'll fail miserably and end up working at a company either the same or worse than Iona, I know that I have to try. I would hate to be working here for the next 15 years, only to look back and wonder what would have happened if I had tried something else.

In a way, this is like graduating. It's closing one door to a section of my life and opening another.

My new life begins in less than 6 hours. Whoa.