So I've been working for the Man for a full month, and I must say, it's pretty awesome. I've never been so enthusiastic about a job. Every morning I leap from bed, wolf down my breakfast, and charge out the door ready to conquer the world.

Then I take the train into the city, have a smoke, and pop into the office. I'm usually the first one on my team to arrive, but my boss is there before me. My boss is the best, and I'm not just saying that because I suspect that he'll end up reading this at some point. We work 14 hours a day sometimes on what can be a frustrating project. We didn't have a weekend for three weeks straight.

But you know what? Nobody complains about it because for all the hours we put in, the boss puts in even more, and he's always on his game, making shit happen. It makes you want to do the same. Those are good people management skills.

Actually, my favorite part about having a job is having people in my life on a regular basis. The people I work with are all really smart -- smarter than I. It's the first time in my life that not only have I not felt surrounded by morons, but I FEEL LIKE A MORON a lot of times. These are some bright folks, lemme tell ya'! It's actually an honor to work with them. So far I haven't met a single person at my job whom I disliked. Everybody's interesting in some way or another, and not in a bad way.

Sometimes it feels like a dream. I halfway expect to wake up disappointed. You know, I don't even know if I can hang. I feel like a minor league pitcher called up to the bigs, like I can be sent back up to Binghamton at a moment's notice. Maybe I just had a lucky run. Whatever. It's pretty exciting now. I'm learning so much! That's probably my second favorite thing about this job -- realizing how much I still need to learn and rolling up my sleeves and learning it. In fact, everybody talks about how much they've learned. It's the kind of environment where your ability to learn is valued as highly as your ability to teach and almost as highly as your ability to produce. How cool is that!

I really hope I can keep this job. Maybe it's because I was scrambling for so long, but this feels like the best job I've ever had. Not to say that I haven't had other jobs I enjoyed, even had one or two that I loved, but this one really feels like home.

You know what's the weirdest thing? I had resigned myself to never having another job. That evolved from an ice-cold near-suicidal hopelessness to a spark of hope when I got a few small gigs on my own to a little fire that kept me warm. Now I've got a pretty steady flame going, and it feels nice. But I had to put the flint to the steel, you know?

I hope you'll do the same. Give yourself the gift of a little hope today! Gather some tinder.