The calls came in within a day of one another. After four and a half years of dead-end work, a stressful internship and several tons of post-college ennui, I had finally been offered not one but two jobs in my field. I'd dreamed of this moment during countless dreary days wasted at my soul-crushing corporate gig. But instead of breakdancing and telling my manager to take the job and shove it, I plunged into a fortnight of sleepless nights, neurotic soul-searching and, yes, even pacing.

The last two weeks have been pure hell, not only because of the Big Important Life Decision that was thrust in front of me in the middle of the holiday season. The number of comical and tragic hurdles that popped up could have filled any number of cheesy, coming-of-age dramas. In the days following the job offers:

One of my uncles died.

A family friend landed in the hospital.

My furnace broke down and I spent five days shivering in a house with on again, off again heat during the coldest week of the year.

A freak snow storm kept me away from my place for a day and a half.

A nail in one of my car's tires led to a two-hour visit to a Les Schwab waiting room.

Roughly 2,000 friends and family members hit town for the holidays.

I woke up Christmas morning to find Santa had left me a shiny new case of respiratory influenza complete with a annoying cough that's still hanging around.

My mother's beloved zebra finch escaped from her cage while my sister and I were at our parent's house. Their cats found the bird before we did. Ever try to coax a tubby feline from behind an entertainment center when it's landed fresh meat after being denied Christmas turkey the night before? I can't say I would recommend the experience. "Beeps III" is now nibbling seeds in Zebra Finch Heaven but I'm happy to say "Beeps IV" is enjoying her new digs in newly reinforced bird cage in my parent's living room.

Tragedy, illness, unreliable furnaces, dead pets and flat tires: all ingredients in one of the worst Christmases ever. Add to that an existential crisis and you've got yourself one hell of a holiday season.

Undaunted, I chose the option that would have sent me to Washington DC and even bought a plane ticket. While it was just a three-month internship, several of my colleagues have followed this same path in recent years to success. One has had the pleasure of chatting poolside with GW Bush at his Crawford ranch AND has been sneered at by Dick Cheney. I had a place to stay, rent free, and a lose network of locals that might have helped me towards a career out there. Opportunities that require cross-country moves and leaps of faith don't come much sweeter.

In need of money, I had planned on working through Friday and took two days off last week to move out of my rental house near Lewis and Clark. I woke up Wednesday, fully determined to spend 14 straight hours packing, cough or no cough. But after watching the season finale of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" over breakfast, I found myself completely incapable of getting anything done. I literally spent over an hour pacing around the house as a migraine headache set in. Maybe it had been Larry David's near death experience that had instilled in me a last-minute flood of second thoughts.

In need of fresh air, I grabbed the iPod and took a walk down to the closest thing to a park in my neighborhood: Riverview Cemetery. The week's rains had subsided and the clouds broke to reveal a snow-covered Mt. Hood as I marched up one hill to watch two grave diggers fight with a backhoe. After a good long stare at the mountain, I looked down and found I was standing next to the grave of one Dr. Richard Asbaugh. On one side was his name and the dates of his birth and death. On the other, this old chestnut compliments of the poet Robert Frost:

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

Was this or was this not a swift kick in the ass from God?

While dilemmas like this don't get any more cliched, I'm not kidding. The Frost quote, the grave diggers, the mountain, all there. If I had brought along the camera I would have taken a picture. Of all the graves in all the cemeteries in all the world, why did Mr. Asbaugh's and his extinguished passion for inspirational verses have to come butting into my darkened corner in the Cantina of Difficult Career Decisions?

So, had this been a movie, I would have run back home and packed in a hysterical frenzy. I would have used that ticket to get on a plane at 7 AM this morning and I would have been in DC right now instead of a cubicle in Beaverton. Somewhere along the line I may have donned a trenchcoat to hold up a boombox in front of girl's window and/or taken one last cruise down to Mel's Diner.

But this isn't a movie, it's my crappy little life. Instead I fretted and dragged my heels for another two days. I decided I wasn't going to go and changed my mind five hundred times between that afternoon in the cemetery and Saturday morning. Over the past few weeks I've talked to roughly three-dozen people. All but four of them told me to flee the city and get my ass to DC, stat. Some of these people have made moves that make my own look like a trip to Dairy Queen. One person up and moved to Warsaw a few years ago. Another has overcome a physical assault in foreign country and is now about to leave the country again to teach English in the Netherlands.

An opportunity, a place to stay, everyone telling me I should go, regardless of the stupid hurdles that popped up but I still couldn't get on that plane. Why? I can think of several reasons. I didn't have enough money saved. The pay wasn't enough for DC. The apartment in question was a tiny studio. Two weeks in the middle of the holidays wasn't enough time to get my affairs in order here in Portland. Ye olde "etc."

But the moment that stopped everything dead was as I was doing dishes on Saturday morning. It wasn't the bird or the furnace or the city I would be leaving behind. With half the house packed up and running incredibly behind schedule I started thinking about how I would have to buy another set of dishes. Another microwave, another television and other odds and ends. If DC worked out, I might have stayed there indefinitely. Or, like many following the same career path, I would have had to spend the next several years bouncing from city to city in search of a decent, permanent gig. Every few years I would have had to toss everything away and start over new again.

I would have been kicked out of that lifestyle faster than Paris Hilton at a Mensa-level Scrabble tournament.

It's a nomadic career path and I'm a complete homebody. While I enjoy an overseas jaunt or a week someplace weird, I'll probably always want to hang my hat in Portland. I love this godforsaken city and moving would have been the emotional equivalent of leaving a limb behind.

While if I became sick of the lifestyle I could have always returned to Portland and landed another dead-end corporate job that isn't entirely true. The local job market still sucks for fools like me that made the mistake of graduating with a liberal arts degree. I think I would have lasted six months or maybe a few years but would have inevitably gravitated back here to a city with absolutely no jobs, anywhere. I would have bounced from temp job to temp job, wishing I had never left Portland in the first place.

When I spoke with one of those four nay-sayers earlier today, I think he nailed the situation on the head. "Had you gone to DC you would have had to go in with determination. You would have needed to succeed and been able to fight against who knows how many others going up the same hill. You couldn't have gone in with any doubts or you would have sunk."

I've wasted years in pursuit of this opportunity and when it was finally handed to me I turned it down. I'm reminded of a cheesy line from "Scrooged." "You gave up Claire for Frisbee the dog?!!" I gave up DC and a shot at the job of my dreams for a drafty old house in SW Portland and a crap job in Beaverton. Much like Dante in "Clerks," I was unwilling to risk my meager little existence for a chance at "the big money and cash prizes."

Right now, at 4:43 PM, two of my coworkers are laughing hysterically as they make farting noises with their hands. I can't stand these people but here I am. A year down the road, I may be at this same desk listening to their inane giggling with a college bowl game on the office TV. Five years, ten years, maybe more of the same. Maybe I'll never escape this pit or maybe I will. Who knows.

Anyone and everyone else would have jumped over this precipice o' life while screaming "carpe diem" but not me. I guess I'm not up for adventure in the great wide open.

Here's another old line that springs to mind:

"Ignorance is bliss."

And they don't make 'em much more ignorant than me. Over the past few weeks every song on the radio has taken on a new meaning. Today "Loser" blasted out of my car stereo's speakers. I'm not a religious man but, given Dr. Asbaugh's grave and this song popping up on the radio three hours after I should have taken off, I'm having my doubts. If there is an intelligent designer responsible for this universe, he's convinced I'm a friggin' idiot.