Early April, I'm on vacation, playing Dance Dance Revolution, when the phone rings. It's Chase. "Grimm, you should go check out ZDNet," he says. "Your group's been dissolved." I finish up my game, go online, and oh my, yes indeed. Our VP went into the cage with his archrival; the archrival left.
I knew in that instant, knew beyond argument, knew beyond explanation, knew with utter certainty that I was going to quit my job. Not that I don't enjoy what I do. It's just that I enjoy writing more. Count up my late nights across this past year, and the Laboratorium beats out work by an order of magnitude.
Here in the coding world, we know exactly where we're going, even if we don't have a terribly good reason for going there. Whereas I'd rather be following purposes around, even into the fogbank. Technology and law and policy and community and creativity and the power of words: there's so much to say. I could be entirely wrong in everything I say, and these would still be discussions the world desperately needs to have.
So I'm leaving programming to try my hand at writing. Three more weeks of work, and then it's out into the unknown for me. Public intellectual or bust.
I'll be traveling in Eastern Europe in June. July is my Seattle swansong, a final glorious summer month in this glorious city. Come the fall, I'm holing up in Boston, teaching a CS section and working other part-time odd jobs, and doing the grunt work of writing and getting that writing published. Beyond that, I don't know.
Which is exactly the point.