I am not of the sincerest belief in golden rules, karma, or rewards from the cosmos. For a long while I have embraced my own hedonism, not thinking much toward the future, and in general being upset at where I am and how I'm living. I've job hopped, jumped ship, given notice day-of with at least 5 jobs in the last two years, and somehow I've always managed to make it work.

In the meantime, I've come a decently long way from where I was before. When I moved to this fair city, I had two choices:

1) Move to China and become an English teacher for an indefinite period of time.

2) Pursue a relationship with a girl in a different state and state of mind.

I chose the latter, and, while needless to say, my parents were relieved, I managed to break up, upset, and get back together with her in the short span of two years. Then she broke up with me, and she gave me no reason, and the first thing I said was:

"I shouldn't be in this state anymore."

While I didn't take it too hard, I started to look for work outside of this fair city. I knew what I had said to myself was true. There's nothing like a good challenge to myself.

So I applied to positions, buffed up a little on my resume and whatnot, and accepted a job closer to my family on the Left Coast. And then suddenly, it happened -- I was giving my two week's notice to my current employer with no other way to explain it but that I was moving closer to my family and had accepted a position 'out there'. The directors accepted my notice with mixed emotions; some coworkers of mine praised me for some courage, others are a bit stressed because I wasn't the only one to leave that mega-corp on the same day.

It was hardly a month ago that I visited home, for the first time in two years, and here I am, as a young man, and my mother is crying in my arms because I've talked to her about all this. My older sister got married that week, and I took up a few interviews in hopeless desperation, praying (eh, not literally) that the skills I've turned from interest to hobby to career would match up well somewhere close to home. That was the vector I was hoping for.

And yes, it happened, and I'm now set to move back. I gave my notice, and immediately afterwards, my car started acting up. I currently drive 50 miles per day to/from work, which is a lifestyle I decidedly despise. I take it into the dealership today, and, thank god, the transmission's still on warranty, because it's shot. Like, give-a-technician-10-minutes-to-look-at-it shot. So I receive a rental car on the manufacturer while they replace it. The warranty was due to end in 3000 miles, and I feel like I won a lottery. It should be done the day before I have to drive back with it.

Meanwhile, the night before I go to the dealership, I'm outside having a cigarette, when a man walks by and I ask him how he's doing. He, quite straightforward, says back to me:

"I just got out of prison serving a 25 year sentence, and I've been out for four days, so not bad."

Like I care what his time was for, I know he's spent more of his life behind bars than I have alive. So I start asking him questions, the non-intrusive kind, like, 'What's the biggest change you've noticed?' and most of his responses are city-specific. As if he's lived here all his life, dreaming of the outside. Wonderful. He tells me he's 15 bucks short for a prison-to-construction-employment training plan, and I do the rare thing of giving him a twenty, a bag of chips (he was hungry), a bottle of water, a pen, and a phone number to call when he gets that job, because I want to hear it directly from him; I hope that man gets it, because I can't imagine the difficulty a 50 year old has to go through having spent half their life in prison.

I went to bed feeling like I had done something good, and when I woke up, people did good to me. It's times like this when I question coincidence and embrace the golden rule.