Journal Entry
End Game
If I’ve been slightly unengaged here, it’s because the last week has been slightly nuts. We started having a repairman over to work on some stuff to get the house ready Monday when he worked on loose flashing around the old chimney to stop a leak.
Meanwhile I’d gotten an email from someone who was moving to Bluffton and sent them a brochure for the house. On Wednesday they asked if they could see the house Friday, so we had to beg the repairman, who’d fixed the flashing and leak, yay, to work on the water-damaged section of the sunroom’s ceiling in 2 days. He didn’t get to painting it, but we did have the basic fix done, and the house cleaned, by Friday to show it.
Then the parents of the boy we hired to mow the lawn wanted to view the house.
Yesterday a third interested individual contacted us.
In the middle of all this on Tuesday night I got accepted to work at bloggingstocks.com, and earlier got a small promotion at bloggingohio.com, which means I can stop hunting for freelancing work. If anything I’m slightly overbooked, but I’d rather work hard the first year than work less, you know?
With that in mind I bumped my quit day up to this Tuesday. Why bum around a place that so fully displayed its lack of integrity and caring about me as a human being as to break news about letting me go on a Friday morning after a Wednesday afternoon funeral for a major family member, and 3 days before my book launch? It’s the single most unthoughtful thing I think I’ve experienced in 10 years, and when I asked about it I was told it was because the people were letting me go had ‘schedules’ and that was when it worked best for them.
I’m not a very touchy-feely kinda guy, but I’m still completely unable to understand what I have done to warrant such treatment from other human beings. I admit, the first two weeks, it kept me up at night, realizing that people I worked with for years cared so little for me as to not realize the joy of experiencing my first novel launch from me, as well as the shattered feeling that, though I was not close to my grandfather, they would break this news to me so close to his death.
So Monday I will pack away all my personal belongings, and I will also go around campus to say good bye to many people who I had friendships with. I have a last purchase order and a few pieces of paperwork that need finished up. On Tuesday it will be mostly good byes, as many people want to meet with me one last time.
It’ll be sad, but I’m looking forward to going my own way. And hopefully one of these 3 interested people will buy the house so I can close this 10 year chapter of my life in short notice and build something more fulfilling with Emily a bit further south in the state…
Filed under the topic Journal on May 8th 2006 at 1:05 am. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this entry to keep track of comments. You can also use to trackback.
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Tobias is a Caribbean-born SF/F novelist who lives in Ohio.
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tobias@tobiasbuckell.com
AIM: tobiasbuckell
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1. Trent on May 8th, 2006 at 7:27 am
Sorry to hear about this, Toby. Always a bummer when people turn out to be pooper-scoopers. Still I’m very happy for you in that the transition is going smoothly so far–plenty of work, selling house. Best wishes for you in this time. Take care.
2. Jon on May 8th, 2006 at 8:17 am
Glad you’re getting out, and good luck with the house sale.
3. David Louis Edelman on May 8th, 2006 at 10:10 am
Hang in there, Toby. Maybe you should leave the starred Library Journal review, the mountain of good press about Crystal Rain, and a copy of the latest Locus bestseller list tacked up somewhere as a farewell.
4. Emily on May 8th, 2006 at 9:22 pm
Unlike so many of the people we’ve met here, we are going to move beyond this place. You’re going places and there’s so much more to this world than an institution that doesn’t practice what it tries to instill in its students.
¡Geronimo!
5. Liz on May 9th, 2006 at 9:58 am
Wow. I figured a university wouldn’t be as much The Man as a giant megacorp. You’re going to be much happier being your own The Man.
6. Greg van Eekhout on May 9th, 2006 at 11:27 am
Sadly, many universities are the man trying to emulate The Man. Congrats on finding a new adventure.
And, hey, see ya Saturday!
7. Karl on May 9th, 2006 at 2:20 pm
Congratulations on shucking the day job! It’ll be a difficult adjustment, but well worth it. Just remember to give your fiction time as much weight as your other gigs; it’s easy to let paying gigs mess with your priorities.
8. Reminder on May 11th, 2006 at 6:14 am
The ol’ Bluffton strikes again, eh? At least they’re consistent. -True Bluffton style! No problem, man. You’ll make it farther on your own than you ever could with them holding you back. I look forward to hanging with you again soon, my friend.
9. Ray Dotson on May 12th, 2006 at 5:54 am
Good luck with things, Toby. I work for a college, too, and it turns out to be the biggest, dumbest, and most heartless brute out there sometimes.
No offense to higher degree holders, but the more PHD’s involved, the less chance there is of making an intelligent decision (or any decision at all) or getting anything useful done!