7 July 06

Last Day

In half an hour, I will be technically unemployed. My Mook existence will be no more, and I am moving on to pastures new.

To be honest, I still think subconsciously that I’ll be back here on Monday – it still hasn’t quite sunk in yet. But alas, there will be no more walking through the crowd of suits to get to London’s trendy Covent Garden in the mornings. No more queueing with the fat tourists at Tesco’s during dinner.

My work here has ranged from interesting and innovation to really boring catalogue sites to non-existent. Especially, the last two months, the work has completely dried up for the only CSSer in the village… I mean, office.

You’d think that having no work to do would be good. It is, for a while. You can do the technical stuff you would be doing for fun in the evenings. But once you’ve done most of the things you want to do, you start to get lazy. There have been days where I’ve done nothing but browse the internet and talk on MSN. Days of being unproductive to the point of feeling like you’re wasting your life sitting there, staring at the screen, watching time tick by so slowly.

Over the past year, I’ve managed to get used to the culture shock of moving to a different city and not knowing anyone at all. No friends to see. Nothing. That didn’t help me settle in at Mook as quickly as I would have hoped. I seemed almost mute for the first few weeks – but slowly, very slowly, I opened up and became a bit louder. I still don’t think I’m as outgoing as I was slightly over a year ago, but hey ho, that’s no one’s fault but my own.

Luckily, everyone at Mook has been really nice and long may they continue doing great work. Some of the Flash stuff they do is amazing. Even though, the community spirit of working in Dalston as one medium-sized indie web designers has dampened by becoming a larger integrated advertising agency through the merger with Nitro, but I still think that everyone I have worked with has been really nice and very professional in what they’ve done.

So, why am I moving to a huge web agency? Well, it’s to push myself, and for the challenge. Being the only CSSer means I can easily fall into bad habits and not have anyone else to point out mistakes. I need people that I will work directly with. Otherwise I’ll never learn, will I?

It’s nothing personal. I haven’t fallen out with anyone or called everyone ‘knob heads’. I’m going for the challenge.

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