Two weeks ago, I told my boss I was leaving. This is at my day job, understand–not my job job (writing poems and books and movies), or my real job (taking care of some kids, and doing my best to keep them from killing themselves and each other, and possibly teaching them some stuff), but rather the place where I’ve spent 8 hours of most days of the past four years. Ten hours, if you add in the commute.
It’s kind of an incredible math: There are 24 hours to a day, one-third of which is spent at work, another one-twelfth getting there, one-third to one-quarter (6-8 hours, on average–admittedly, an optimistic average) sleeping, in preparation for the onslaught of your day. What’s left should be a lot of time (another 8-10 hours, right?, if you’ve been keeping up with the math), but where does it all go? Praying. Cleaning. Eating. Posting dumb stuff on Facebook. Trying to write.
Far and away the biggest thing I’ve done with the past few years is Jewniverse–which, if you haven’t been getting it, is a daily email I’ve been writing and designing that’s better, I hope, than the title suggests: something cool and interesting and novel that you’ve never heard of, that’s in some way Jewish. You can subscribe here–too late to catch most of mine, but good people will still be writing (I’ll still be one of them, occasionally), and I’ve still got a month of stuff ready to go out. The website is not quite live yet, but in a week or two, if you go to thejewniverse.com, there’ll be a ton of these things to check out.
(And then I’ve done a bunch of other stuff, like these videos and these articles and this blog, and omg I threw years of my life into this blog, and one day I’ll separate the cool articles from the stupid video posts, but I don’t know when…but it’s weird, saying goodbye.)
So that’s been the past two years. It’s weird to say goodbye to your babies, especially since, unlike actual babies,it’s not even like my old posts are going to come back from college or invite me to their weddings or put me into a nursing home or something.
But it’s been good. Daniel, my editor, made a point of telling me that, over the past 2 years, I’ve written and sent out 4.7 million emails. Most of them have been short, under 200 words, but it’s still pretty powerful and an amazing gift that I’ve been able to. And it’s totally dumb of me to say thank you to you for reading and listening, but I’m going to say it anyway.
I’m still around. I’ll still blog (hopefully more, now that I’ve got time!) at matthue.com, and I have a new book coming out next year! I’m moving on–starting Monday, I’ll be writing video games for Wireless Generation, and I’m hugely excited, although right now I’m more nervous and anxious about it. But I’ll see you around. It’s a small Internet, after all, and it’s only getting smaller.
Thank you.
(Yeah. That’s all I meant to say.)
Thank you.
