If not now then when

Okay.

So, you know how sometimes you see a job listing for an article writer on craigslist and you think "I'm totally unqualified" but something about it catches at you, nags you, maybe the way the ad was written or something, and you leave it open in its own browser tab while you do your daily trifecta of email-facebook-reddit and then you go back and read it again; they want a grammar nut and you're definitely that plus they're asking for three writing samples so maybe those could get you hired even without experience if you're actually any good and if there's not much competition and it's kinda funny how lately you've been thinking about updating your resume anyway so, what the heck, why not today, what else are you really doing with your time and so you get everything out and spend the next six hours tweaking your accomplishments and polishing your degrees and adjusting fonts until it's all just so and the entire time you're thinking "Why am I doing this, I really need to mud that living room wall" but some whisper makes you keep going anyway, some insistent if not now then when and all day you keep re-reading that damned ad and you find yourself polishing up three writing samples instead of making dinner and you really wish your sister weren't sailing in stupid Puerto Rico this week so she could proofread everything for you and you think "Well it's not like I'm applying for anything right now anyway, just getting my resume in order, it can wait" and then you're spending another hour composing the perfect intro letter that's the just-right balance of funny yet professional yet casual yet definitely interested and hoping it's not too funny or too casual or too interested and then you're hitting send in spite of yourself and thinking "My god, what just happened here" and all of it without you ever consciously deciding to actually apply?

Yeah. That totally happened to me last week, too.

An hour after the guy got my email, he called me to schedule a phone interview. He offered me the job, pending a one-week trial period "Which in your case," he said, "will probably be just be a formality. I have a good feeling this will work out really well."

It pays almost nothing. Nearly enough to support us, if we lived in a third-world country. And it completely doesn't matter, because I can officially add 'writer' to that hard-won resume now.

I love my new life.