A quarter of a century ago, fresh off the formal end of my first marriage, I found myself unexpectedly involved for a few months with a woman I’d known since the middle of the previous decade. It was not a realistic match, though I hope a pleasant time was had by all, and at about the four-month mark we went out to dinner, over the first course of which she advised me that we would not be “seeing” one another henceforth. Now, this was a disappointing but not traumatic development for me (“Ha!” I might have sneered, had I been feeling snarky, “I’ve had my heart broken by EXPERTS!”) but it was unexpected: my fork was halfway off the plate as she began, and before it reached my mouth I found I’d completely lost my appetite.

I bring this up because of a telephone conversation I had this morning. I’ve been doing pro bono site maintenance and design for a nonprofit since shortly after the turn of the century, having taken the assignment on an emergency basis (no long-term involvement being then contemplated), and as a favor for a colleague, when the original designer left town. I had been making noises these latter years about the need for the group to find an eventual successor, and had seen indications recently that they were moving to secure the services of a backstop, someone to fill in when, owing to the crush of work at BrainDead Systems--it does happen now and then--I might be unable to do site updates timely. A few days ago I sent them the FTP particulars in response to a request from the chairwoman emeritus, my original POC. Returning a call from the organization’s president this morning, I had the oddest conversation: effusive thanks for providing the technical details (the mere return, after all, of information originally furnished by them in 2000), and even more effusive thanks for “everything you’ve done for us.” It was with the third repetition of this phrase at the end of the conversation that I thought “By Jove, they’re firing me!” And so it appears they have. My feelings about this are only slightly mixed. Overall, I’m glad to be out from the obligation. I’m maliciously curious to see how my successor (who will, I strongly suspect, receive regular compensation for her work) fares with the various cheats, tricks, shortcuts, workarounds and third-party stylesheets I brought to bear in assembling this iteration. I've worked with other designers’ sites: you never know when you're going to turn around and dislodge a stack of load-bearing HTML. Indeed, I wouldn't wish my previous design for this group on my worst enemy (I’d probably opt for one of the more hideous and prolonged fatal diseases). But the suddenness of it rankles a little, and perversely, there’s a bit of “old guy shouldered aside for young whippersnapper” dynamic at work as well, and I think that a testimonial dinner, a goddamned gold watch and a couple of blowjobs would have been in order. Well, OK, maybe not the gold watch.

Still, I’m grateful on balance to have been let off the hook for further site maintenance, which was always something gnawing at my professional conscience whenever I let the intervals between checking that dedicated email account for site refresh requests go too long. My best wishes to the nonprofit and to its new site administrator going forward. No, really.