I started a new job this week. On Monday, actually, but it took me until today to get over my fear of jinxing the whole thing enough to talk about it. I started to update my LinkedIn profile and promptly freaked out over my presumptuousness that I'd last more than a week. 

I lost my "big" corporate contract job back in March and have been some degree of underemployed ever since. What was supposed to be a few weeks of a temporary budget hiccup turned into months of waiting to get called back in, then eventual (overdue) acceptance that I was going to have to start over and find something new. I did some short-term stuff, wrote lots of extra Smackdowns, took endless calls and meetings with leads and promises of awesome long-term gigs coming right around the corner, followed by silence or procrastination or lowball offers. All with three children home and underfoot full time, because I couldn't justify paying for summer camps or sitters until I figured out what to do work-wise. 

If I've sounded particularly grumpy or not funny during the past few months, that's why. I am sorry. I did not have my shit together and not having my shit together makes me unbearably cranky. 

And then, in the space of a week, everything fell into place. Four different leads officially turned into viable offers, all long-term, flexible, and primarily at home. 

I took the one that scared me the most. The one with the most responsibility, the most risk, and probably the biggest odds of me flaming out spectacularly. Which I don't intend to do, at all, of course, but you try telling that to my panicked squirrel brain at three in the morning. 

(Okay, I actually accepted two of the jobs. The big one and a smaller, low-pressure writing gig for a client I've worked with before. Eggs, baskets, omelets, etc.)

The funny thing is this job did not come about because of blogging or a connection I've made from blogging, but from someone I used to work with at my old job. My old old old job, the one I quit a few months after Noah was born, right as the blogging-as-bubble-industry was set to take off. Just someone who remembered me and reached out at precisely the right moment. So after walking away from writing about finance and investments and retirement strategies over EIGHT YEARS AGO, I'm back in, all full-circle like. But with a few new Internetty/marketing skills up my sleeve to make things interesting.

And crippling self-doubt aside, it feels really pretty great. 

(Although ask me again when the reality of three kids and like, a 50-hour work week sinks in. There will be some flailing. Expect that shit.)