On Tuesday 21st June, at about 3.30pm, I finished a particularly arduous phone call, rose from my corner desk, and walked somewhat shakily to my manager. He barely looked up from his furious typing, swearing under his breath as the unread e-mails gushed into his inbox.
I said I needed to speak to him and that it needed to be now. Surprised by my uncharacteristic force, he led me somewhat guardedly to a pokey meeting room on the other side of the office. I remember that the phone there was disconnected, wires trailing like spaghetti across the desk, and I nearly fell over a four-way plug in my haste to take a chair.
Once sat down, I told him I resigned, that my last day would be Friday 22nd July, and that I wished him well for the future.
His reaction is for the moment irrelevant. Indeed, it doesn't even really matter what I used to do, or what I will be doing in the future. There will be plenty of time to reflect on my time there, and no doubt future posts will delve into my motivations. What does matter is that tomorrow, I won't be stumbling into the bathroom at 5.30am, throwing cold water over my face in a bid to drag myself from Sunday slumber. I won't be hastily dressing in the dark. I won't be waking my girlfriend as I struggle with cufflinks and ties and razor blades.
In fact, I have no idea what I'll be doing tomorrow. What I do know is that it will be the first day of forty-two of freedom.
It's in this blog that I intend to document those days. I've lost count of the number of people who have insisted that to spend these six weeks anywhere but in exotic climes miles away from London - cocktail in one hand, a phrasebook in the other - would be a criminal waste of an opportunity. To some extent I can see their point. But I don't have the cash to do that - I've saved a month's salary and that will be enough to ensure the rent is paid and the water still flows from my taps. Besides I've spent my entire career travelling, and sometimes the pull that home exerts over you is far greater than any promise of misadventures in South America or Eastern Europe. (Though I did Google "Buenos Aires" more than once!)
Instead, I will be rediscovering the city in which I live. I'll be practising for my Grade 8 piano exam. I'll be experimenting with recipes I've previously cast aside due to time or energy constraints. I'll be trying my utmost to re-establish some kind of personal fitness having pushed exercise to the bottom of my priority list for far too long. And I'll be sharing my exploits here.
In times of high unemployment and low national self-esteem, I want to understand the very best ways of spending time unblemished by the office. Too few are the opportunities we have to break away from the rat race and focus on doing what we want to do - what we wished we could do if we weren't manacled by the mentality of the 9-5 workday. Hopefully I'll find out more about myself in these six weeks than I ever did in the unending stream of e-mails, phone calls and cross-country trains that punctured the last four years.
(If you have any suggestions for filling my forty two days of freedom, please let me know. I'm all for the more outlandish experiences - even better if they cost less than £10!)
