a story and conversation repository (est. 2000)

2006 ( 38 Years Old )

Since 1999, I have taken the last two weeks of every year off work. After my 2005 break, the morning I was supposed to return, Marty found me on the couch. She stopped, glanced at her watch, then at me.

MARTY
What are you doing?

TROY
Watching TV. 

MARTY
Aren’t you supposed to be getting ready for work? 

TROY
Yeah, I don’t think I’m going back. 

MARTY
Uhhh. What do you mean you don’t think you’re going back?

TROY
Yeah. I can’t go back. It’s so evil there. 

MARTY
You do realize we are a single-income family, and presently, you are that single-income? That means you don’t get to not go back to your job. If you don't like that job, get another job. Then and only then, can you stop going to this job.

In case you are not yet convinced that I lead a charmed and lottery-rich life, here's a story for you. A few nights after that conversation, I was working on a side-project for a local university. I needed some of their letterhead for the site design and called a neighbor I knew worked for the school. He had what I needed and told me to come by to get it.

I walked the two blocks to his house. He invited me in and said he had to go upstairs for the stationary. As he turned to leave, he asked how I was doing. I confessed I was kinda shitty because I just started looking for a new job this week and had never really had to look for a job before and was fully dreading the prospect. 

Andrew stopped walking, turned to me, and said, “You are looking for a job?” A bit startled at his response, I said I was; he fanned his hand before him and asked me to have a seat on his living room couch. I sat, and he sat in a chair adjacent to me. He asked me a few questions before telling me that he had just accepted a new position at the university to start a research center and needed a technology director. We spent the next hour talking about the opportunity. 

When I returned home, Marty immediately noticed my dazed look. She asked what was wrong. I told her I thought I just got a new job--if you ever get angsty about the number of things that seem to fall into my lap, you will have to get in line behind Marty who has a front-row seat the barrage of fortunes that have fallen around me.

It felt like a lifetime but in truth took just four months from that leather couch conversation. And, on April 10th, 2006, I happily made the quarter-mile walking commute to my new job, which was without doubt the best job I’d ever had (until working for myself in 2016—though it was the 2006 super-job that made the extraordinary job of 2016 possible). 

If you ever find yourself questioning or doubting the powerful magic that is timing in life, please give me a call and I will talk you off that mistaken ledge you have unwittingly found yourself upon.