Well, there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that I am no longer employed. (I know, many people would see this as bad news. They are mistaken.)

My last day at work was Tuesday the 16th, although I'm going back in January to do one more issue for them on a freelance basis. Basically they wanted me to stay through mid-January, but didn't want to pay me over the holidays when the newsletter was on a skip cycle and there was nothing for them to get out of me. This is precisely the kind of shabby, nickel-and-dime crap I've come to expect from them over the years, and which made me want to get out in the first place.

But I let them do that, and I'm out of there. It doesn't really feel like it yet, because it's the holidays and they disrupt everything anyway, and because I'm going back in January, and I've got a couple pieces I need to finish up quickly for Sci-Fi. Right now it just feels like I'm taking a little vacation time to deal with Christmas shopping and the like.

But in fact, as far as I'm concerned, I am now retired. That's not to say I don't plan on working again. I do. If a job furthers my ambitions in some way, like writing for Sci-Fi, that's fine. But I don't plan on ever again taking some random crap job, i.e. trade journalism, solely for the money.

We'll see how well that stands up, long-term, to the realities of the world, but that's my intention at the moment.

The bad news is that I promptly went out and caught a cold. My sinuses are slowly exploding and I ache and I'm having trouble keeping my attention focused beyond, well, pretty much the length of a journal entry. So much for hitting the ground running...