I spent most of the weekend trying to decide which job I should take: the safe one, or the interesting one? It was not fun churning it over and over, because it’s not like a puzzle.

When you do a Sudoku puzzle, for example, you enter into it with the knowledge that there’s a solution (well, once I did one that didn’t have a solution, but I have to say that I still enjoyed the seven hours I spent on proving there wasn’t one. It was still a puzzle, just a different one than it had started out to be.)

My point is, life is unfortunately not very much like a puzzle, with an identifiable and correct solution. No, a more appropriate analogy for life would be that you’re barefoot on a rocking boat, wearing a blindfold, and you have to find your way from one end to the other. Except the bottom of the boat is covered with fish hooks, and every time you take a couple steps, a sailor on the boat either punches you in the kidneys or spin-kicks you in the solar plexus.

Except, at least in this one instance, my job choice has worked out to be a puzzle. And I’m fucking good at puzzles.

Here’s how it unfolded.

By Sunday afternoon, I was sick of thinking about which job to take. I was also, to tell the truth, sick of thinking of B. and Wednesday. By having sex with her, have I fully committed myself to her? Have we taken an important toward marriage, at least in her mind? Because I know for sure that I do not want to marry her. Except, right as I typed that, I realized that’s not true. I know that I want to be married. I want to relax and not worry about being alone anymore. And maybe B. is as good as I deserve. For that matter, she’s probably much better than I deserve. I know I’ve described her quirks, both facial and behavioral, but the truth is she’s been kind to me and has offered herself to me. That’s not something I should take so lightly.

I’m getting off track. I wanted to talk about how I solved the job puzzle. You can probably tell I’m kind of scatter-brained right now. So, Sunday afternoon, I went to the challenge court for some racquetball. I had to wait for a few minutes, watching a man and woman play (the challenge court has a glass wall). The woman was clearly better, and so it wasn’t a big surprise that the man left the court, saying, “Good luck” to me as I went in.

Her name is Janet, and she kicked my ass, two straight games. She destroyed me in the first game: 15-7. I started figuring out her style by the second game and closed the gap. She eventually beat me 20-18 (we were playing with the must-win-by-2 rule, I don’t think everyone plays that way). There was nobody waiting for the court after our two games, so we just swatted the ball around for a while, and I told her that I was trying to pick between two jobs, and I had to decide by the next day.

I have to say, it felt good to be able to honestly brag that I had to choose between two jobs. I explained the basics of my decision, and then Janet asked me a very smart question: “Why decide tomorrow?”

Yeah, why decide tomorrow? Just go into the small company and accept the job, but also call the safe company and accept the job there, too. Ask for a start date of May 1. By the time I get to April 20 or so, I’ll know whether I want to stay at the small company, at which point I could call the safe company and tell them I’ve had a change of heart. Or, on the other hand, if by April 20 I’ve decided the small company is screwed up, I can quit and go to the safe company.

Pure genius.

So that’s what I did. I sent email to the safe company saying I accepted the offer, and would like to begin May 1. I haven’t heard back from them, but most companies like starting employees at the beginning of months, so I expect that will work for them.

And then I went to work at this small company. It turns out I’ll be reporting to the company president, which isn’t all that strange when you consider that there are fewer than twenty people working there. And I won’t be in IT. My title is “Director, Special Projects.”

Which means I do whatever the president (let’s call him Devin) wants done. Devin’s one of those idea-a-minute guys, who has only a vague idea of whether his ideas can be executed or how. Most of his ideas have to do with multilevel marketing, with an emphasis on finding new customers via spam and short-lived websites.

Here’s the thing, though: so far everything he’s asked me to “look into” is ridiculously simple. They’re all things that other people have done before, and in most cases there’s open source code already in place. In other words, I am going to be able to be this guy’s genius go-to guy, overdelivering for him by doing about ten hours of work per week.

And here’s the best part: he asked if I mind working from home. It was like I had died and gone to heaven.

I have a suspicion (much more than a suspicion, actually) that I’m an under-the-table employee. I deduced this by the way Devin offered me an additional 10% to my income if I would take care of my own benefits. I told him it would need to be more like 20% and we settled at 15%. Also, I have not (and don’t expect to) fill out a W2 form. So I don’t know if I’m technically even employed. Maybe I’m just a contractor, but I’m getting a certain amount every two weeks.

So here’s a question: is there any reason in the world why I shouldn’t also take the safe job? I can’t think of one. I have a few debts to erase, and I think this could be an interesting way to do it.

Like I said, puzzle solved.