I was the walrus, but now I'm John

I had a dream of being sacked in December, around the time they work out the 2009 books, sort of like how San Francisca got sacked a few months ago. That dream would have seen me get a four-month payout under Belgium's Claeys formula after I'd saved up enough for a down payment on a house, tuition and expenses for another university degree, and a little more besides. Which would mean, with the Claeys formula money, I could have bought us a ticket to Australia for a berth on a freighter, which would give us something like two months on a ship in luxury accommodation, with me reading books and writing books and banging my sweetie and playing in the pool and visiting bizarre ports of call and staring at the horizon and not fucking working, until my corporate brain was healed and I'd be ready to hippy the fuck out in the rain forest. The thinking goes that after two months at sea I'd be so bored that poisonous snakes, plague toads, larrikins ands saltwater crocodiles would be objects of interest rather than fear or disgust.

Anyways, that dream has dwindled to almost nothing. We're a five-man department. One of the men has got pregnant and will be out on maternity leave for most of the second half of the year. And then yesterday, another man who's senior to me quit because she wants to go to teacher's college this summer. Good for her - I think she was going through largely the same sort of thinking I've been. But what it means is that now, after less than two years, I'm basically unfirable next December. Despite this fucking economic meltdown, despite my constant refusal to brush my hair or bleach my moustache before I go to work, despite my piercings, despite my pottymouth, there is almost no chance of my getting fired next December now, especially since my managers reckon our owners are only going to let them hire one more person to fill the breach - but we needed that one more person anyways, without replacing anybody, because we've expanded our coverage.

Okay - it's not the end of the world. And anyways people in my department never get fired, because it's traditionally been easier to wait until they freak out and quit. So it was always a pipe dream. But I imagine it's like losing a lottery ticket that you had a really good feeling about. I guess the hope isn't quite extinguished. This is a very, very remarkable economic situation: now, as a senior person, I'll be making significantly more money than new hires, in a situation where my employers would have access to some really phenomenal candidates. I'd fire me. But I think I should just ignore the hope. When I change my life, I'll have to be the one who changes my life. It's time to take a stand. Time to look my Protestant work ethic (which won't let me be incompetent and get fired in the normal way) in the eye and say, 'fuck you, Protestant work ethic, I'm so much more than my job.'

Alternatively, I could just start shitting on other people's desks . . .