I will get up around seven on Monday morning and start a new routine.

You see, I got a job.

I was laid off (fired, quit or something in the middle of those--but officially laid off) on Friday, January 13th, 2006. I start the new gig on Monday, July 14th, 2008. Almost exactly two and a half years later. Almost like I planned it all this way.

But I didn't.

I've been joking to people that it's the horrible Bush economy that cut short my retirement. Has pressed me into the service of others once again. If the market was doing good at all, I might not have decided to start looking for a job. But despite a short run in early fall last year, the financial markets have been going south for almost the entire time I've been actively trading. Not that I didn't make a little money, but not enough to live on. And I thought Republicans were all about making money the easy way.

And so I started applying for jobs back in January. I first interviewed for this new one in late February. It seemed to go well. And then they put off hiring my position for a month or two. In early May, I went in again. And, again, I thought it went well.

Two weeks later I got the dreaded two sentence rejection letter. My brother had to deliver it to me because they sent it to my old address.

This was the week before Memorial Day, and I got a few emails from other places I'd applied to the same week. And they had the same message: no job for you.

I figured that was pretty much it for getting a job this summer. The economy is in the shitter and good paying jobs aren't exactly dangling from the trees right now.

This bad news actually put me into a blissful state. I felt pretty happy (even though this meant no money was coming in) about lounging around for the summer. It was way too hot to work in June anyway.

And then, three weeks later, my bliss was shattered by an email and phone call. Apparently their first choice didn't work out, and they wondered if I was still interested.

Of course it's not really as simple as all of that. There are lots of hurdles to getting this job, because I will be working in conjunction with the state lottery. Lots of paperwork. I had to go to the bank for notary work. There was the drug (pee) test. Fingerprinting. Light grilling from the guy who fingerprinted me at the lottery. And the rest of the security check (I gave them five people to call, but they only talked to one of them--guess I'm a pretty secure guy).

Is the job worth all of this hassle? Well, yeah, in this crappy economy (it ain't easy with that sumbitch Reagan--I mean Bush--in the White House).

And so, in the last six months, I've joined a new band, got a new place to live and found a new job. In the next month or so, I'll be an uncle thrice over (first niece). With all these changes, I'm surprised people still recognize me on the street.

Maybe that's why I get carded all the time.

Matt Worley is almost looking forward to the return of road rage.