I don’t get into trouble. I try, I put myself in questionable circumstances and I skate through with very little problem.

I have gone off with a couple of guys I just met that spoke very little English for a night of club hopping and came back to the hotel after dawn in Austria.

I have ridden the NY subway at 3am from the Village to Times Square with just some guys from the hotel I had met the day before.

I have hung out with Skinheads drinking beer in a cemetery.

I have traveled parts of Europe on my own.

I walk risky areas of town at night.

I got a ride to a distant city for Halloween with only a math text book, a jumpsuit (another layer of my costume) and my dorm meal card. No ride home, no money beyond a dollar in change, no way to contact my friends who thought I wasn’t coming, no coat (Colorado in Oct is cold). I told my roommate that if I didn’t come back in two weeks to call my dad. (I managed to run into other friends in a wandering crowd of thousands and the friends I was meeting up with turned out to be two buildings from where I ended up standing and they had friends that came down from my college that would give me a ride home. I am still amazed that night worked out).

The last one brings me to the other side of that coin. I have a way of making things work for me. I call it Wiggling. I work the situation to work the best way possible for me.

For my first semester of my Master’s degree, I found a job teaching remedial math (fractions, division, etc.). It was twice a week with two sets of office hours. For this I got all of my tuition and fees paid, half of my medical and $4,000 stipend. The really amazing part is that the paperwork wouldn’t be complete until after the first class started and half the tuition would be due before that. Normally I would have to pay for that half and have it refunded when everything went through. But because I worked the system, I had a signed letter stating that I didn’t need to pay it that I convinced the temp cashiers was enough to waive my tuition and fees.

I have managed to turn in a 23 page research paper that consisted of 5 photocopied pages of an article, one page of an analysis and the rest were typed captions under cutout pieces of the same article. Basically I wrote about three pages. I got an A- on the paper and a request from the professor to use it in the book he was writing for the class.

I managed to go to go to a Worldcon for $200: $10 for a dinner when I arrived in town, $20 for two weapons and some books in the dealer’s room and $170 for the plane flight. All my food and lodgings were comped and I worked what I consider the perfect schedule. All I did was turn myself over to someone as a slave and everything just lined up.

These are some of the big places where I have managed to do things in such a way that everything just falls perfectly into place and I feel like I am just skating by. The hard part is I don’t know how I do this. I don’t know how to make it happen. When it happens that is great, but I can’t count on it. It is a talent of mine but not one I can actively use.

Well, I managed to do it again. My ability to screw up and screw around and have it work out has shown up. I have been having real problems getting to work on time for the last few months. It is a fight with my and my psyche. It has resulted in me only working part time at my current temp assignment but they are paying a very well so I can afford it barely. It isn’t doing anything for refilling the coffers from my unemployment. It was a great opportunity to make money while I can to cover when I don’t have the opportunity. But I couldn’t get in more than 4 hours a day. I am also really efficient and good at what I do so there really wasn’t a need for me to come in that much more.

So, where my ability shows up is that they are offering me a permanent part time position. At $50k a year. And since they don’t carry Kaiser, they will be taking over my Kaiser COBRA payments and then switching to an individual plan when that runs out, which I was planning on doing anyway. And I am working with layouts and artwork in Illustrator, InDesign and handling their html email and designed their one page website. I am stretching myself and it feels good. It is still within what I can do but it is so much more than what I have done for years. Oh, did I mention that they cater lunch every day and pay for my parking.

There is no way I could imagine making this sort of thing happen. I don’t know how it worked out. I know I was a major part of it. If I didn’t do what I do, it wouldn’t have happened. I would love to know how to make this ability to Wiggle work for me on command instead of just amazing me when things like this come together.

I think I am in shock. I should be happy about it but I feel like either it is too good to be true and I am going to be dropped from a higher height or that I will be paying for this in some other way. I know people that need what I have got set up and I actually would like to work more hours. It is good for me to be productive and have structure. I have managed to find a place that pays me to afford to stay and not have a very tight structure.

So it is good news, even if I feel weird and uncomfortable about it.