This story is the kind of random that is so random it creates its own pattern. This story just makes me wonder if life it orderly or purely chaotic.

Today is also Captain’s Log, 2022, the Ides of March. Had Pat the Champion hung onto the terrestrial plane, she’d have been a ripe or seasoned or well-aged 93. But, she’s been gone for 20 years instead.

Today I got my first pay check from my new job that’s doing new philanthropy in the new millennium with new money from one of the younger of the world’s billionaires.

I wrote about what happened that got me to this point last May. The career next, if next means 20 years later.

The TL;dr – I got knocked off the career ladder of blazers and blouses and budgets, writing memos back in 2004, coincidentally around Independence Day. A bit shy of two decades later, I get hired as a temp by a friend who was a front row viewer of the 2004 flameout.

I always wonder whether Pat’s dying was a catalyst, a lever that proved the center could not hold. My status quo for so long included her, so change was a-gonna come, when she died. And it did.

When I moved to California, I didn’t just avoid a career ladder, I worked 14 years at a place that brags about having a “flat” structure. No where to go and certainly not up.

I switched it up in 2019 and tried a stint in the local industry of tech. It was fun while it lasted, decked out in all the cliches. I wore a branded hoodie, drank cold brew and kombucha on tap and sat in an SF open office. And, I eventually got waylaid like the rest of the world in the fallout from COVID19.

I’m pretty sure Pat and I would have bonded on the international mandate to stay the fuck home.

About a year into the global pandemic, I lived through an epic employment drama that lasted a perfect 7 days. On the 7th day, February 22, 2021, I quit.

I onboarded to my new, new job, no longer a temp on contract, on 2/22/2022, a year to the day from my last, non-temp job.

So this month it all converges. I get to use a lot from my bag of job tricks from a pretty big bag. Who knew I’d find something where having worked in grants management for science research, at a philanthropy, and for a CTO at a tech company would all come together. In one day, I defined PR in software development to a lawyer, explained charitable purposes to an engineer and processed a grant award to support an International research center.

Today, to remember Pat, my mother, perhaps the strongest influencer in my life, I celebrate all of the coincidences and wrinkles that got me here. My coworker from the beginning of the century who is my boss now. The date 2/2/22, when I marked a funny anniversary, and I created a new milestone, And a very nice paycheck on Pat’s birthday.