A careful individual typically avoids mistakes but allows inertia and overplanning to waste opportunities. An impulsive application for a journalism internship breaks habitual hesitation. At 26, modest career progress includes a school newspaper position at a community college and a strong desire to write. A near-fatal car crash creates urgent awareness of mortality and a need for quicker payoff. Securing the internship requires travel to New York. Political shifts after the Democrats' loss to Donald Trump introduce travel complications, including passport difficulties for transgender people and constraints tied to the Real ID Act.
Nobody can accuse me of not being careful. I make very few real mistakes, instead opting for piles of wasted opportunities. Inertia takes me behind the woodshed. Anything worth doing is worth planning out within an inch of its life, and I spend an embarrassingly long time deciding to do anything at all. Applying to this internship was actually one of the most impulsive things I have ever done.
About a year ago, on my commute to my silly little community college job I was almost undone by a little old lady in a Corolla. I had the straight green, she had a flashing yellow turn signal. When I swerved to avoid her I set myself on course to give a telephone pole a 40 mph hug. In the half-second before impact I knew for certain I was going to die.
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