I’ve done it. I’ve sent the email that will end my employment.

I work for ITV, the major independent TV network in the United Kingdom. Most of the staff at ITV are sales people, managers, administrators and accountants but I am one of those lucky people who actually make programmes. I am a journalist/producer and I’ve worked for ITV for eleven years. When the company announced that a limited number of staff were to be offered the chance of voluntary redundancy, I put my name forward. I probably wouldn’t get selected and, even if I was, I could change my mind.

After weeks of waiting, I received the email from Human Resources in London. It was a very simple memo – an A4 attachment which I had to print out, sign, scan back in and return. “Please delete as appropriate,” it said. The next line was “I confirm that I wish to accept voluntary redundancy.”

Using my favourite pen*, I deleted the words: “I do not wish to accept voluntary redundancy” and signed on the dotted line. The signature looked fine. Cheerful even.

I felt very calm and businesslike as I scanned the signed form into the new Apple MacBook Pro that ITV had seen fit to issue to me. I clicked ‘reply’, attached the signed form and wrote a brief, polite email to this person in HR I’d never previously heard of. It was ready to go.

I considered the touchpad on the computer. I could say that this small, silvery square looked like a swimming pool seen from the top of a skyscraper and I was about to jump. But it didn’t really feel like that. It just felt like the right thing to do. I held the middle finger of my right hand over the touchpad and said aloud “One, two, three …” and smartly tapped the pad.

“Your email has been sent,” said a little message on the screen. Right then.

What happened next? I went for a week’s holiday in Dubai and hopped over to Abu Dhabi to see Kimi Raikkonen win the F1 Grand Prix in a Lotus. Now I’m back at my desk with a lot of work to do before I leave at the end of December.

This blog will record my final days of employment and what on earth I do next. I hope that whatever I get right and wrong in the coming months will be of some use to anyone considering a similar move. More soon.

* Oh, it’s a Yard-o-Led.