Yesterday I quit my job, and though it wasn’t a particularly ‘Happening’ party, the guys still did throw me one. I got them two wine bottles and more came in later. Nobody had enough to get drunk, which made sense because yesterday was a Wednesday and they still have to work today and tomorrow.

I’m going to miss them all so terribly.

My parting gifts included a card (with two cats in the front and back), a cat mug, and a hippie’s drawing book with a cloth cover. Ducky gave me a Manga Catalogue that was passed to him by his brother, published in 2007. It’s a ing treasure.

I made everyone watch “Momotaro” and tried to sing along to it: reconfirming my weirdness. I know that not everyone liked me for being such a different up, especially after I shaved my head – but those few that mattered most really embraced my weirdness, and most of all encouraged it.

My boss told me – his parting words: that I must not lose the weird I am, because it’s easy to get serious and busy but being that crazy is what pushes on growing our limits – and that I do need to work on my people skills, actively putting effort into it. And I couldn’t nod harder with the second one.

I know that when I asked to leave, as I was concerned of losing my touch in college work and needing very badly to finish my studies, I was told a day after ‘okay’ for a reason. After I didn’t make the selection to Spikes Asia, I did take a heavy blow. Maybe I shouldn’t have creatively, knowing that I didn’t make enough effort to put myself on paper, and yet I did. It was when I realized that I still have so much work ahead of me, just to find out my true calling. I wasn’t finding it trying to think of 30 second TV ideas for whatever whatever brand.

During these realizations, I was travelling with my family to Thailand, and taking a look around me, it dawned on me how relatively contained I am in my day to day life back in Sri Lanka.

And since I lost interest in coming up with ideas for commercial briefs, they noticed that. And I was conscious of the whole thing – I had to leave the static of advertising behind to find something. They didn’t plead with me to stay and let go, which I bitterly appreciate.

What I do need, right now, is absolute confidence in my true calling. I have now, let go of the advertising work that dilutes my interest in creative work and am left to my devices, to navigate the seven ing seas.

There’s so many things I want to try doing, and being at Magic Mango for a little over a year has given me confidence in my own abilities to be able to start on them. I hope I had said enough to the guys there to let them know how much I appreciate them.

Every single time I do leave my work place, (when I finished my internships at the bank, and when I left my Graphic Designer job at inmarc) it had always felt like opening up a void in my day to day life. I still miss the general lightheartedness of a job at a bank, and I miss all the girl fun we used to have at inmarc. I think leaving Magic Mango has resulted in the biggest void yet, as now I will miss walking into an office with a bunch of hyper, creative, supportive set of dudes.

I know I’m welcome to drop into office anytime so I really shouldn’t miss them too much. But I know being at home with only a mean voice in my head is not going to compare to having the guys around me. And thus, my biggest void yet.

I am determined to make the best of it however.