transitioning

One more day left this month! What a long, strange month it's been.
Intrigue swept through the office today -- and I don't mean The Pepsi Syndrome that ensued when my nearby neighbor drowned her mouse with her beverage (though it was intriguing how many people she called to tell that she'd killed her mouse with Pepsi and couldn't work).
No, this was intrigue so intriguing that I almost didn't find out about it -- because I am very close to it, as it turns out. Intrigue that I stumbled into. Intrigue that had several people meeting in a large room, then fewer people meeting in a smaller room. Lots of averted gazes, attempted poker faces.
Intrigue so intriguing that I can't even share it with you.
And -- it is intrigue that does not affect my life. Because I am leaving. In Four Days.
Oh, one other odd incident: an email from an outside friend, asking about the layoff.
The news story that we ran did not specify who was voluntary and who was involuntary. So, of course, people want to know.
Does it matter? I'd like to say it doesn't. But it does. I want to be able to say that it was my choice. Is that bad? Because, deep down, it was really no choice at all. It is very, very difficult to work at the newspaper. And not difficult in a challenging sort of way, but difficult in a soul-eroding sort of way. So, given a choice between scraping out a living there and breaking out to make a new start -- well, you see there is no choice. Yes, I left voluntarily, but mostly so that I didn't leave later, involuntarily, in one of these.