Well, last week's post about my job was some sort of catalyst. It -- along with a few other incidents during the week -- convinced me that my job was not where I wanted to be. And on Friday I quit!

Today is my first day of real freedom and I couldn't be happier. At the moment I'm not planning on finding another full-time job. I got a pretty amazing freelance writing position (I'll disclose more details once it's started) and while it won't be nearly enough work to support me, it has convinced me that writing for a living is actually a possibility. Until that happens, I'll be cobbling together various jobs and planning my permanent escape.

The truth is that I had been contemplating quitting my last job since my first week there. For the first month, it was due to my HORRIBLE coworker, who was rude and irrational to the point of insanity. One example:

I am sitting at my desk during the first week. She comes over to my desk and hands me a box.

Horrible Coworker: [Redacted] wants you to go through these receipts. Give the box back to me when you're done.

The box is full of approximately 2 million receipts, just loose and floating around.

Me: Wait, what do you mean by 'go through'? Does she want me to organize them by card or date or what?

Horrible Coworker: I don't know! She just told me to tell you to go through them and I've told you, so now my job is done!

She huffs off.

Yes. This is not exaggerated. The girl also threatened to get me fired and told another coworker she wasn't going to train me fully because then they'd have a reason to keep her around. I hope she's having fun doing her old job today....

I also quit because the company was totally shady: underpaying workers, misfiling them as independent contractors so the owners wouldn't have to pay employment taxes and in the meantime making all these extravagant personal purchases. There were also no benefits, not even paid sick days. When I quit, I told the owner of the company I didn't like the way he ran his business for all the reasons above and I think he was in shock. The only thing he said was, "So that's it? No notice, just this is your last day?" I said, "Well, you've treated me like a temporary employee, so I'm going to treat this like a temporary job."

Which is probably as close to "You can take this job and shove it" as I'm ever going to get.

I'm now organizing a mass IRS and California Labor Board complaint submission. It's amazing how many people have come out of the woodwork to offer support and commiseration. Meanwhile, I've been on this puffy cloud of post-quitting euphoria. I've been writing, cooking, laughing and talking to friends. On Thursday I'm flying up to Seattle with Rob to visit my family, his first time seeing my mom and stepdad since a brief dinner almost four years ago. Today I'm going to eat ice cream and go jogging in a nearby park. I've spent the morning working on my screenplay for Script Frenzy (a story for another day). The sun is shining.

So things are good here. How are you?