I quit my job. No, the other one.

For the last couple years, making Ghost sites do cool stuff has been my side-gig, and teaching chemistry has been my main gig. Today, that all changes.

I just told the College that I'm not coming back. My contract this year included new language about "if we don't hear from you by July 15, we'll assume you are not returning." (Did everyone get that? Or just me?) I considered just not turning in my contract, but the admin assistants in the Dean's office has been very kind about dealing with me and my late contract submissions more than once, so I figured I should spare them any worrying that maybe I'd just missed the deadline.

I'm going to miss some of the teaching, although having my course load go up to four courses wasn't going to make me enjoy it more. I'm not going to miss grading. [I suspect that the sweet spot in terms of enjoying teaching for me is probably about one course at a time. More is just more grading.] I'm going to miss research, but the new teaching load and changes to the summer student housing policy were going to make that harder, and not getting paid to work all summer had sort of lost its charm anyway.

I'm going to miss my seeing my chemistry colleagues every day. They're awesome. I hope we'll stay friends, but it's harder for this introvert to maintain friendships with people when I don't just happen to see them every day and they wander in and out of my office.

I'm not going to miss the building I've taught in for the last 17 years. Not the flakey electrical, not the rooms that haven't been painted in almost two decades (I was there!), not the radiators banging, not the bad climate control, and definitely not the leaking roof and the occasional burst pipe.

I set out at the start of the year to think carefully about what it'd take to launch. Then things got briefly derailed by medical issues. But ultimately, it was time, and I'm excited for what's next.

Time to build some cool stuff!

Before everyone emails me all at once to ask if I'm now free to do a big job this week, I'm booking for early August. :) It's good to be popular, right? Right?