It’s time to break the news: I’ve decided to quit my job.

Of course, the ironic thing is that by now, this should be news to absolutely no one—no one who reads this site, anyway, as I’ve informed most of them already through other channels. I wanted to wait to post about it here until I’d finished nailing down all the details, which I think has finally been done today.

I was recently presented with an opportunity that was incredibly intriguing and alluring, and which would provide me with the long-sought-after ability to work from home and set my own hours, while still earning a regular paycheck. It’s that kind of flexibility that really is hard to find in today’s modern corporate world. Instead of occupying a cubicle each day, I’ll be working in my own environment, on my own equipment, with a very small group of highly-skilled, technically-inclined professionals who have very big ideas and enough resources to execute on them.

At the same time, another unique opportunity has also appeared: The chance to get together with two of my good friends from high school and do some freelance work together. I’ve had more freelance design work than I know what to do with lately, with more coming in all the time, so when my buddies approached me with this proposition, it seemed like a great idea. And it couldn’t have come at a better time, either. If I were still working the same day job, I’m not quite sure how I would have fit it in.

For sure, though, this is going to be a very busy next few weeks. Just today, I, along with the CEO of my current workplace, interviewed a prospective new employee for my replacement, and we both thought she was a great match for the company. The CEO’s going to get her an offer letter right away, with an offer to start on Monday. This is pretty damn lucky because it’s the first candidate we’ve interviewed, and her resume, attitude and skill set all seemed top-notch. Talk about luck.

I was hoping for something like this, and I got it. When I originally gave notice of my resignation last Friday, I was talked into staying on part-time for a few days each week until the end of July. Unfortunately, the more I thought about it, the more I began to feel that was a mistake on my part—because in essence, it would mean that everyone here would continue to dump five (or six) days’ worth of work on my head, and I would have less than half the time to get it done. Considering July is going to be a critical month at my new position, with the first official public launch of our big product taking place, I couldn’t afford to be so divided.

Fortunately, my replacement candidate checked out 100%, and I hope she’ll be accepting the offer. But today’s meeting gave me a foothold to mention to the CEO that the requirement of working here on site on a part-time basis during July was not going to work out, and would stretch me past my limits and put my new obligations in jeopardy. Instead I agreed to work through the end of June (which is only four extra days) and then after that, only being available to do contract-based work should the need arise. I was very impressed with the young woman we interviewed today and I’m sure I can get her up to speed in no time, and one of her talents seems to be her self-starting nature and her ability to learn on her own how to do things that she may not know how to do. That’s been the cornerstone of my years here at the company, so I’m sure she’ll do well. Now all she has to do is accept the offer. I’m going to pray to every diety I’m aware of for the next few days straight, in the hopes that she does.

Anyway, while my days are going to be filled with trepidation for a while—new job, training a new employee (who hopefully comes on board), breaking the news to all these ridiculously emotional people that I’m leaving, etc.—there is a shiny, glossy silver lining in all of this which will be coming down the pipeline this week, well ahead of all the stress-inducing items I’ve already mentioned. One nice perk of my new position is the fact that, as I mentioned, I get to work from home. Since I need a kickass machine to do that, the group I’m going to work for is funding around 2/3rds of the cost of a new work/gaming rig, the likes of which I haven’t put together in over five years. The extra third I picked up myself, since my work doesn’t require some of the components I wanted, but the ultimate gaming machine does.

I never thought I’d have the kind of money to toss down on an SLI setup, but here again is another opportunity that’s presented itself, and without risk, there is no reward, right? Here is the system which is currently at a FedEx sort facility in Tennessee, and should be on the floor of my room in two more days. I ordered the whole flippin’ thing piecemeal from Newegg, so I’m gonna have a fun time putting it all together.

• Antec Performance One P160 Silver 1.2mm anodized aluminum ATX Mid Tower Case with Swiveling Front Control Panel
• Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard
• AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 1MB L2 Socket 939 Processor
• Thermalright XP-120 heatsink w/Arctic Silver 5
• Three Nexus (Yate Loon) Ultra Quiet 120mm Fans (2x for case, 1x for CPU HSF)
• Corsair XMS 2GB (2×1GB) 184-Pin DDR PC3200 Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model Twinx2048-3200c2pt
• Two BFG GeForce 6800GT OC 256MB GDDR3 PCI-Express x16 Video Cards
• Enermax All in One Noisetaker Series EG701AX-VE SFMA 24-pin ATX12V SLI-Approved 600W Power Supply
• Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB 10,000 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive
• Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6B300S0 300GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive
• Plextor Serial ATA DVD Burner Model PX-716SA/SW
• Lite-On Black IDE DVD-ROM Drive Model SOHD-16P9SBLK
• Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum 7.1 Channels Sound Card
• Silver 1.44MB 3.5” Internal Floppy Drive
• Canon CanoScan 4200F USB Interface Flatbed Scanner
• Two Sceptre X9g-Naga III Black 19” 8ms LCD Monitors

And for those times when I have to drive a couple miles over to the “office” (really the home of one of the developers):

• CaseAce GearGrip Pro (Large) Computer Carrying Harness
• CaseAce GearGrip LCD Monitor Carrying Case

The whole mess was more money than I would have spent (or been able to spend) if I were funding the entire purchase on my own, but the amount out-of-pocket for me ended up being a little less than that amount, so it’s all good. Dual 6800 GTs in SLI mode are sure gonna look sweet in Doom 3 and other games based on the same engine, where performance is nearly doubled with the two cards running in sync. (Not all games make full use of both cards.) And when I’m not gaming, I can disable SLI mode and use all three monitors—my 22” CRT plus the two new 19” LCDs—for design work. The only stupid thing is that nVidia’s drivers don’t let you use multiple monitors during normal Windows desktop work if SLI is enabled. Hopefully one of these days they’ll fix that. I don’t expect to be able to play games on three monitors, but I wish I didn’t have to uncheck a box and then reboot every time I want to switch between “game time” and “work time”. Still, the separation between those two times is likely to be structured enough that it won’t matter.

At this point I’m taking things day-by-day, and just trying to hold it all together. I need to coordinate with a lot of people—my current employer, my new employer, my friends at home, the new staff member who will replace me—and there’s gonna be a lot of stuff to do. While all of these preparations, changes and transitions are made, it’s helpful to know that at the end of all of this, after my current workplace has a new full-time graphic artist they can count on, I’m fully entrenched in my new business, and the new computer is set up and running, the end result will be:

• The ability to get up late, work in the evenings, have lunch together with Apple, or run errands during normal business hours which will all combine to make life easier
• The chance to work on something that’s actually exciting, and contribute meaningfully to the development of a real-world product that has great potential to become a great source of revenue
• A single point of contact for tasks and projects instead of fifty million people all e-mailing me at once
• No more ad pages
• No more rush hour commute (hell, no more commute at all, most days)
• A bunch of new friends and new professionals to network with
• In general, a less stressful day-to-day existence that’s actually fulfilling

And if you ask me, it all can’t start soon enough.

For the immediate future: I’m looking forward to the sea of boxes of sweet-smelling electronic equipment that’s going to be getting here soon. It’s like digital nirvana—this time for real. (The supposed digital nirvana that took place when I bought my Falcon Northwest was really just a waste-of-money nirvana in disguise.)

Oh—and I’d really like to apologize to Apple for being freaky, wishy-washy, stressed-out, short-tempered, and whatever other new Mood of the Day™ I may have adopted over the past couple of weeks. Have faith in me. All of this is gonna work out just fine.

Now that the media blackout is over, there will be more news soon. Stay tuned.