Footloose

Today was my last day at the magazine. I was doing pretty good until after I sent a "bye" mail to the whole mag, and said goodbey to the copy desk, and my copy chief wrote me a mail that made me all sniffly. She mentioned that she didn't think she'd have had the grace to handle all this as well as I have, and that a number of writers and editors have written to her telling her how disappointed they are that I'm being let go.

The rest of the desk insisted on having a conference call today to say goodbye, since they couldn't do the usual thing and take me to lunch, since I'm out here all alone. I really would have rather had a gift certificate and taken myself out to lunch! I'm both regretful and relieved, and I don't know which one I feel more strongly. Relieved to be away from a bunch of East coast prep school summer in the Hamptons fucking snobs, and to get away from the constant barrage of unpleasant news. I can go back to sticking my head in the political sand.

But regretful that I'm leaving some really wonderful people. There aren't a lot of them on staff, but the ones who are good are very very good (and the ones who aren't are horrid). During the conference call, I felt like I was at my own funeral. Everybody had to take time to say one good thing about me, in that sort of "and now we will remember Gwyn" way, and I felt really uncomfortable. Not to mention disgusted when my boss had to go on about how great a copyeditor I am and how I will be missed. Then she did it again in the all-magazine conf call moments later. Gah.

I had lunch yesterday with the managing editor of a local press, and I came away feeling positive again that maybe I'll be able to at least try my hand at freelancing and see how well it goes. I have some agencies to sign up with, as well, to see if there's a possibility of short term work at design and ad firms, an environment I'm pretty comfortable in. Ideally I'd like to mix it up. But books have always interested me, and I have such a strange background, with history in a couple areas local publishers are very strong in, that I hope I can turn this into something fruitful. Sometimes I wonder if people believe in me more than I am worth. But I won't know till I try.

I'm sort of looking forward to doing something different, and mining my contacts, and I really actually enjoy taking my contacts out for lunch or coffee -- so this schmoozing thing is kinda fun. I hadn't seen kate in a couple of years, and it's fun to catch up. Some of the other people I'm meeting I haven't talked to in ages.

I think some of today's bad feelings were also because they were giving me such crap about sending my computer back that I wished I'd never brought it up (I doubt anyone would have noticed I hadn't sent it back). I should have just stuck it in a drawer until someday down the line they discovered it wasn't there.

Yesterday, my dad brought me peach/orange roses. He's so not the kind of guy to do that, so it was nice. And I got a valentine in the mail from dine -- thank you! And on top of that, I got candy hearts from sweet_ali. Gestures like that can really make hard weeks a lot easier. I'm looking forward now to sleeping later, and to Escapade, and maybe even to feeling like, after not being chained to my desk all day, I can write again, and won't feel so pressured when I vid.