Last day

Strange, it is, to be facing my last day working at The Globe and Mail. Given my absence from the place for a year, one would assume this moment would barely register. After all, I cut that cord earlier this year after months of introspection, didn't I? 
Apparently not, for this moment registers deeply, as it is now my choice to leave.


For those who haven't been inside it, The Globe is a pretty cool place. I was kind of star-struck when I first went in. Windows! In a newsroom! Functioning printers! Colour on the wall that is not just remnant cigarette smoke! 
Each reporter has a huge cubicle that provides two desk spaces -- enough to build a small journalistic empire, unless you are the wonderful, eccentric Colin Freeze, in which case your possessions seem to grow and multiply until their tentacles pry into every space around you, prompting your neighbours to construct protective barriers using outdated government reports and underused dictionaries. 
Sure, it doesn't have the free coffee making facilities, creekside dining area and occasional celebratory beer of the Sunny Coast Daily, but by golly it veritably oozes journalistic endeavour. And that's before I found out I'd be sitting spitting distance from institutions like Ian Brown and Kirk Makin, and of course the wonderful Anthony Reinhart.


That star-struck respect still lingers inside me -- who wouldn't think it's cool to be in that building, with those people? -- yet it's now partnered with a tinge of sadness. I've not become what I imagined there. I didn't scale the heights to become one of the anointed. I am a good journalist, and a better writer, yet I feel as if those aspects of myself were never fully tested.Inside that building, it seems as if they don't see my potential; that they don't see me. Perhaps this is the way of things for all workers, or perhaps I simply didn't show them, but I am now choosing another option.

Like a petulant -- or, some may say, neglected -- child, I'm packing up my bat and ball and heading to greener pastures! Up ahead, distant and hazy but still recognizable, is my future self, and she's not walking on the same rutted path I've been running along for 11 years. Somewhere, she's taken a surprising turn and has ended up in brilliant sunshine. 
I'm not exactly sure where she went astray, but it's going to be bloody fun finding out.

Stay tuned.