Quitaversary

5/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

On Sunday 7th May 2023 I went to bed. Lucy was already there. I remember lying silently for a few minutes. Then I asked her a question.

"Can I quit my job tomorrow?"

I Was An IT Consultant

That felt like a confession worthy of title case. All my life I've been an IT Consultant. Not a bad way to make a living, and like Cal Newport says: do what you're good at. I was good at it.

And some of the jobs were great. Maybe I'll write about some of my past jobs one day. But the job I had last May was not great.

It was so not-great, I felt bad taking the money. It was so so not-great, I felt like it was damaging my reputation. And I can't just 'turn up' at work: if you're paying me to do a job, I am going to do a stellar job. On this project, that really just wasn't possible.

The state of modern IT infrastructure projects isn't the point of this post. Let me know if you want to hear me rant about that later, though. I would be hap-py to do that.

At the same time, my little forum was starting to see a bit of action. The sort of thing that makes you think, huh, have I got a thing?

When you're 46(?), and you have a thing, it's time to do something with that thing

46? 47? Honestly when you get to this age you stop counting. Late 40s.

So when you're in your late 40s and all you've ever wanted to do is not work for someone else, and you realise that you've got this thing, then it might be time to do something with that thing.

I've looked for 'the thing' for years. Friends and I have had weekly meetings where we try to come up with 'the thing'. The problem is that I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to be the boss of a big thing. The CEO of some company. Responsibility. Power. Staff. Stress.

I just don't care. I'm not that guy. I want what they sometimes disparagingly call a 'lifestyle business'. Something that pays the bills, probably won't make you rich, but doesn't consume your entire life.

Well here I am with this realisation. This little website that I've kept going for about a decade now¹ is my thing.

Anyway so I say to Lucy, "can I quit my job?"

And after a long chat discussing the pros (I don't go to that place any more) and the cons (food costs money) we decide, yeah, I'll quit.[^notaquitter] To spend time on the thing.

It happened fast.

I told my consulting company² on Monday morning. Two weeks notice.

They told 'the customer' -- whose project was the shambles to be escaped -- on Monday afternoon.

On Tuesday morning my account manager gave me a little shush and come with me wave from down the corridor. We went downstairs.

"Alan is having you offboarded", he tells me. Alan³ was the Program Director. He wasn't there; he hid somewhere else that day. (I never saw him again.)

And sure enough, by midday on Tuesday I had handed back the customer's laptop and access card. So now I find myself at my SmallConsultingCo and we're all wondering what I do for the next 8½ days.

"Rather than me sit here and pretend to work," I say, "why don't you pay me out until the end of this week. And I'll go home now, and we're done."

And they say yes.

So at about 3pm on Tuesday I walk in to the garden. Lucy's there with the chickens. "I'm finished", I say. "I'm done."

We had no plan and so for a while I used Microsoft Teams

A sentence I hoped never to write.

Given the disaster I had just witnessed, surely, I thought, helping large organisations be more organised is the way.

And so I started looking at developing a Teams app. Now I don't know if you've ever looked at developing a Teams app.

Do not.

The state of Microsoft Teams development isn't the point of this post. Let me know if you want to hear me rant about that later, though. I would be hap-py to do that.

The state of disorganisation inside 'the enterprise' -- the pure raw chaos that is today's workplace, the sheer immensity of the challenge that would be making it sane again, the almost incomprehensible extent to which it's broken and the fact that the people ostensibly in charge of your organisation's data have no idea what to do and have essentially given up -- isn't the point of this post. Let me know if you want to hear me rant about that later, though. I would be hap-py to do that.

This feels like a natural place to end. Because the next part of this story is where we did find a thing to make that was useful, and I'll tell that another day if I run out of more interesting things to write.

Suffice to say, 🥳

It was one of the best decisions of my life.

Thank you. Because we can afford to buy food because of your support. That sounds cheesy but it's totally true. Whether you've bought one of my things or just spread the word or just been a friend online or whatever: you make this possible.

This is my job now. One year ago I couldn't have imagined it.[^notaquitter]: By the way, I've quit very few jobs. I believe that if you say you'll do a thing, you should stay and do the thing. In this case, there was no thing worth completing.