The last hurrah

It should come as no surprise by now that it's been an easy couple of weeks at work, with plenty of time for lazy, long lunches and plenty of web surfing. This morning, I came in with only the following on my to-do list:

• Finalise two speeches and send to the big boss;
• Add remarks to subordinates' work review forms and move them up the hierarchy to bosslet;
• Attend 3 pm meeting.

In fact, I had enough time that I caught up reading on all the archives for cour marly's and Little Miss Drinkalot's blogs (and I keep reading the latter in my head as "Little Miss Drinksalot").

But the 3 pm meeting changed everything: There's a last-minute and therefore urgent! project that needs to start now and wind up by mid-January, and it's got my name written all over it --- not so much because the bosses are forcing the last ounce of blood-sweat-toil out of me before I go, but because it's the exact kind of project I'd've been jockeying to get on board if I weren't leaving anyway. Does it involve writing? Check. Proofreading? Check. Working with creative types? Check. Getting to put something of a personal stamp on a shiny, glossy publication? Check. It's all mine, baby.

Well, not all mine. There's someone else nominally in charge, but he's going on leave in December. In fact, he and I had planned our respective leave periods so that they wouldn't overlap, which turns out to have been prescience on our part. He can run things till he goes, then I'll take over, and he'll be back in time to take it to the end, just when I vanish on my last leave-clearing blitz of the year.

I'm all tingly inside, thinking about this project. It will mean a shitload of work next week, before I go on leave the following week, and then more intense work when I come back for the last three weeks on the job. But it's what I would do, full-time, if I could find a job that paid me to do it. It'll be fun. It'll spin me into that high when the deadline's looming, and there aren't enough working days to finish the work, so it's nights and weekends and emails and faxes flying to and fro, and poring over proofs till I can't see straight, and showing up --- surprise! --- on the production company's doorstep because there was just one more little thing I had to see to in person.

Most importantly, it will be real. There will be a final product that I can hold in my hand. I'll still have to appease bosses along the way, but I'll get to nudge and sway things my way, mostly.

I thought I'd sidle my way out of here, a quiet, low-profile exit, aiming mainly not to let any snafus hit me on the way out. This is going to be so much better.