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.

manic monday

Actually, I'm getting a head start on Monday. It's very late on Sunday night. It's the last late Sunday night that I'll spend in this cube. YaHOO.
What am I doing? I'm transitioning. I'm writing long emails to my successor (who is also my predecessor) filled with lots of coding information and routing that I will no longer have to do.
YaHOO.
I am creating files for all the reviews that are in my inbox, and assigning them a place on the schedule. Almost the last time I'll have to do that. YaHOO.
I am also clearing stuff out. It's stunning the amount of paper a body can accumulate in 10 years. One file had stapled to the front seven years of scheduling for the fiction and poetry column. Inside were hard copies of stories. OK, that gave me a little pang -- I will miss that work. Here is a note that a poet sent to me when I told him I was leaving:

Dang it, dang it, dang it. I feared this. You have been great to work with and this is a real loss for literature in NC. Do you have something in line? The [newspaper] should know better than this, but they don't seemed to really care about anything but profit now. ... of course I want to stay in touch. I'm really sorry this is happening ... Let me know what's next.

That I will miss -- the doing good for authors, especially poets who rarely find an audience as large as they found with this newspaper. And I will miss working with these very good people.
Anyway, the thing about all that paper is that it is sorted by email now. Interesting to see all those old ways of doing things. I have a file filled with author photos that they mailed in. In an envelope. With a medley of stamps. All images are sent digitally now, of course.
Interesting too the things that are so important to daily life here -- calendars, schedules, details of style changes (I served lots of years on the committee to update the in-house stylebook. Oh the things I could do with all those hours spent discussing capitalization and punctuation!). Not a bit of it is important to my future life. I will have my own calendar, my own schedule, my own meetings. All fun, of course.
I emptied three mail bins and a vertical file and two drawers. I filled a tall trash barrel with papers and folders. I filled another wastebasket.
There is more. There is before me five days in which to get it done.
I have a most delicious carrot awaiting me. I will get it done.
YaHOO