At 61, I was unemployed. Sooner or later, my severance package would stop arriving in my checking account, and although I’ve never worried much about money, I began thinking of ways to cut back, something I’ve never been known for. I tried not to surrender to my bent for the dramatic, but once in a while — usually awake in the middle of the night —  I’d see a vision of me in the future, popping open a little can of gourmet cat food, spreading it on some crackers, and calling it a day.

Then I had an idea. Traditionally (for me) this can be a terrifying way of opening a paragraph. I tried out my idea on my neighbor, who kindly wondered why he’d seen me home so much. I told him I’d lost my job and had been applying for new ones, but nothing was happening. Of course I didn’t say it exactly that way. I think I used words like “transitioning” and “turning point.” The phrase “letting you go,” my actual launching pad, was still coming to me regularly in my dreams, the ones where I’d show up at my office and everyone there would have to remind me that they’d already “let me go,” and — ashamed (and, yes, naked of course) — I’d slump back to my car and drive home.

I’d just met this neighbor, so he was a natural tabula rasa candidate. “I’ve decided I’m going to write,” I said, listening to how self-important that sentence sounded wafting through the air.

“Really?” he said. “I didn’t know you were a writer.”

If he meant had I ever made a comfortable living as a writer — or even an uncomfortable one — the answer was “no.” If he meant had anyone ever heard of me, nope. I didn’t mention that I’d won third place in my 6^th grade short story contest back on Long Island, but it was one of the consequential events I was building my next career on. It’s amazing how reality hardly ever has anything to do with being a writer.

I bought some office supplies I thought writers needed. A stapler. A pencil sharpener, even though I barely ever wrote with a pencil. I was good on Post-It Notes. I kept writing. Nothing much. Nothing good. But I kept writing. And waited for a sign.

My next official act of reinvention was to move the desk in my study to the window. Before, I’d always thought I’d find it distracting, but I’d become such an early riser, I figured I might enjoy seeing the sun come up. Or that watching people in the little park below would give me some material once I’d stopped thinking about my big win in the short story contest in 6^th grade.

The park is taken over with dog owners once the sun arrives. By about 6:45, the grounds resemble a golden retriever convention. People in their Under Armor gear talk and nod and smile as the dogs sniff at each other. (This is an unscientific sample, but I’ve learned 90% of the golden retrievers in America are named Bailey.) Mothers, nannies, and toddlers take up the next shift. At dusk, from the same window, I see parents and their children getting in a few minutes on the playground equipment before dinner.

Sometimes when nothing is coming to me, I walk out my back door and sit at the playground. I jot down what I hear or see in the notebook I carry everywhere. One day a boy, about ten, sat down next to me on the bench. His dad was off to the side, watching expectantly. I’d seen him nod in my direction and say quietly to his son, “Go ahead.” The boy cleared his throat a little and held out a stack of copy paper, mercilessly stapled down one side. The cover read ROBOTS in bold lettering, with an ambitious illustration.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m a writer. I have this book for sale. It costs $1 if you want to buy it. But just to warn you, it might be scary in some parts for your kids.” I loved that he didn’t have a clue that my kids are now in their thirties. I loved his confidence, even when his voice faltered a little.

I took the book in my hands and thumbed through. I complimented him on his wording and his drawing. I said, “Stay right here,” and I went back to my house and got a dollar. He showed me where the scary parts were so I’d be prepared.

“Is it hard to be a writer?” I asked.

“Not one bit,” he said. And he took off for the swings.

Bud. I almost disqualified Bud based on his name alone. I was 50, but I thought I was still too young to go out with a person named Bud. On the other hand — as a divorced woman — I was flush with a need for fiscal responsibility, so I was determined to make good on my dating service investment. My strategy was to date all candidates who didn’t ask about threesomes or sound psychotic in their introductory email message.

Bud led me to believe he was a football coach by telling me, “I’m a football coach.” Technically, he turned out to be a little less than this. But by this point I was actively telling potential dates I was a writer. The bigger truth was happening 9-5 in a drab cubicle, with me hunched over, straightening out murky paragraphs that someone else (a real writer) had constructed.

He suggested we — who in the cold light of day had become a lowly editor and a defensive coordinator at a high school known only for its mathematics department — meet at a sports bar. It’s noisy in those places, yes. But you can lose yourself in a bank of televisions on the wall, everything from NASCAR to a tennis tournament in France if there’s a lull in the conversation. We settled in and ordered a pitcher of beer to share.

It turned out he loved the idea of what I did for a living. This hardly ever happened to me. Most men thought something like brain surgeon or sex therapist would have been livelier, so I was surprised when Bud wanted to delve into my occupation.

We moved quickly beyond the difference between semicolon and comma. Then he started quizzing me on the definitions of homonyms that had always confused him, like “except” and “accept.” I found I was even boring myself, which was hard to do. But whatever answer I’d come up with, Bud did a little hitting himself on the side of the head in wonderment as if I’d written the Oxford English Dictionary.

You can’t underestimate the power of someone mistaking you for a member of the Algonquin Round Table just as you take that first sip of cold Yuengling. As you may have figured out by now, it’s usually all about me.

I liked the place, too. I could tell that pleased him. He confided that he came here often, that it was the usual meeting place for him and his friends. And then . . . what do you know? They started streaming through the door, one or two at a time.

“Ask her a question about words. Ask her anything,” he said to the group that had now slid into our booth. I felt like the guy at the sideshow who could guess your weight within two pounds. There was nothing to it, but these men thought I was a genius. I did what I imagine Dorothy Parker would have done. I went with it. Between quick tutorials on stuff most people remembered from 6th grade, I took long, deep, delicious sips. And against my better judgment, I ate loaded potato skins and Buffalo wings for dinner.

At home, I got on my computer and — with an immediacy born of three unfortunate dates in a row — I started going through profiles. I stopped at one of a writer who lived in Maine. He was a long way from home, in every sense of the word. But I felt my fingers on the keys. And then I hit send.

My two biggest childhood fears were long shots at best: bear attacks and appendicitis. Since my neighborhood was built in 1950, every tree, bush, and errant twig were leveled to fit as many Cape Cod houses on a block as possible. I barely saw a squirrel.

Appendicitis never got any closer to me than the boy across the street, who was rushed to the hospital by ambulance after hours of crying in mysterious pain. He was carried out his front door on a stretcher as we congregated and watched in horror. Later we heard this organ we hadn’t even known existed had “exploded” inside him. Although he recovered in a few days, I knew it was just a matter of time before appendicitis came looking for me, too.

I grew up and my fears changed. Then they changed again. Now I look around and — is it just me or — are there more and more things to cause concern? Diseases that start out with a little innocent tingling in your foot. Isis. Choking on a cough drop. Tsunami. Salmonella. Snakes. Wild fires. And what if you really do fall and you can’t get up?

I am guilty of being chickenhearted.

Like this: I called for a cab at 6:30 AM, and here it is. Why do I look at the cab’s tires before I get in? I tell myself although — yes — they do look bald, I’m sure cab companies have standards. The inside of the cab smells like vomit. Once we’re on the highway, I can see the speedometer reaching insane speeds.

I say, helpfully, “We’ve got plenty of time for my flight. We’re good on time.” That’s as direct as I will get because the driver is scowling now. She eats her breakfast  — a bag of Doritos and Diet Coke between her legs — as she steers with her left index finger and thumb.

“Have you worked all night?”

“Yep.” I could hear my family saying, “Bald tires and excessive speed, and it appears the driver may have fallen asleep while eating,” when people at my wake ask how I died.

But I don’t die, it turns out. So far so good.

I’m taking off my shoes and jacket at Airport Security when an unmistakable smell comes wafting by me. Vodka. This is not the 6-hour old stuff that oozes out of a person’s pores from the night before. This is a freshly slammed-down shot now filling the air. I hope it’s the passenger in front of me in the Hawaiian shirt. I sure don’t want it to be someone whose job it is to look in purses and find knives.

Ever since Amtrak starting saying, “If you see something, say something,” I’m always at the ready to scream, “Here! Here’s something you need to check out!” I give the TSA guy a good whiff as I go by. All clear.

The plane takes off and touches down smoothly, so the luck that’s been with me all my life is still holding. I take a deep breath and tell myself to trust the universe more. Because the only bears I’ve seen lately are on Discovery Channel. And after all these years, I still have my original appendix, which shows no sign of exploding. Of course it’s still early.

[I’m taking a blogging break next week to work on my book, which is nearing first draft stage. See you back here on October 1st.]