It’s the end of an era. It’s the closing chapter. It’s game over, man! Game over! It’s…a really good analogy that makes you feel sad even though you don’t know why yet.

For about…I don’t know, say two years, I’ve shared an office two or three days a week with Uproar Comics, Startacus and Troll Inc. Now we’re being unceremoniously kicked out of said office. Our new room is a dank little hole in the ground with little natural light, and it ain’t big enough for the four of us.

Thus, Uproar and Troll Inc. are departing for greener pastures. Gone will be the geeky cross-room conversations about films, games, TV, and what makes a superhero. Gone will be the awful puns, the amusing arguments, the snort-riddled giggling (leading to more laughing and points on the snort-o-meter). Gone will be my friends.

Through our proximity, I have shared ideas, been inspired, laughed a lot, received work, donated work, helped, been helped, learnt, and been shot at with Nerf guns. Until the end of the day, there are about 25 of us in the office, and I’d like to call a good chunk of them friends. The social anxiety…thing…agoraphobia, whatever, in me knows that’s a lot more than someone like me can generally hope to have. And the fact that I could be in the midst of that many people and not want them to f*** off quickly says more about them than about me.

We’ve known for only couple of weeks that we’re being kicked out of the office, so we haven’t had a lot of time for the fact to sink in, and to prepare. Then again, things don’t tend to mean as much to other people as they do to me, so I’ll wrap this up quickly and get back to writing something worthwhile.

I don’t like change. I didn’t like it when Troll Inc. came in. I didn’t like it when Startacus came in. I didn’t like it when Uproar came in. I liked the quiet. I wished they had found somewhere else to go and left me on my own in the office. Now, in the quiet of an empty office, I wish they’d stay.

But it’s not all gloom. Well, it is, literally speaking, because there’s just one small window at the top of our new office, but Startacus will remain with me in our new little dungeon. So the laughing will continue, just with fewer voices. And no snorts.

So, apart from hauling computers and desks around, there’s only one thing left:

Danny, Gio, Heather, Holly, Jonny, Michael ‘The Beard’, Ruth, Ciaran, Richard, Andrew, Marcus, Jim, Emma, Gavin, Thomas, Ryan, Felix, Tom, Lewis, music one, and the other few I don’t know the names of… Goodbye.

Cam, Eoin, Philip…we need a new coffee machine.