That's a bit of a number jump. If you're keeping track, it should have been 578. But things happen.

The number was always a count down to my last day at LOVE. I had it timed perfectly. I'd just make it to my 11th anniversary, then leave and head to the UK to devote my life to Clipper for a year and a bit. Not knowing the exact date that the 15-16 race will leave, 12th June gave me a concrete day, something to mark how close the race was getting.

But just like that, 578 becomes 22. In 22 days I'll say goodbye to the show I've worked on for almost 8 years (2899 days by my reckoning). Numbers numbers numbers.

But it's time. And when you've accepted the fact that you're leaving at some point in the future, it makes it much easier to leave sooner. Why wait, if it's going to happen?

When I was first approached about working on the Winter Olympics, I said no. Not because of the whole Russia in winter thing. I'd just become so used to the idea that 12th June 2015 wold be my last day. I'd work through, because I knew I could pay for Clipper doing that.

But part of the reason for doing Clipper was to challenge myself. Jump out of the rut I increasingly find myself into. Be involved in something that I'd be able to look back on after the fact, and say "holy shit, we did that!" And I realized at some point between May and now that going to Russia, working in a new country with new people on a new system and a new show can be all those things too.

Plus, "holy shit, the Olympics!"

So there it is. 22 days. All of a sudden the future is more murky than it has been in a long time, and I don't mind. I feel more like myself now than I have in a long time. Or maybe I feel like what it was like to be 19, jumping on a train and seeing where it would take me, not worrying about money or the language I couldn't speak when I got there.

I just don't feel 19 when I wake up in the mornings any more. Numbers numbers numbers.