verything becomes funny eventually, if you can wait long enough to get perspective. Take my career path, for instance. I started as a nursery school teacher, and then proceeded to try fifteen subsequent professions—from dairy farm worker to travel agent to college administrator to psychotherapist to librarian. Every job I ever held felt like jail to me, and I'd always quit (with considerable fanfare) after a few months. Although this did not feel funny at the time, it certainly seems funny now—especially in view of the fact that I never had trouble landing new jobs. I finally realized that I could parlay my remarkable job-hunting talent into something marketable, and so I wrote The No-Pain Resume Workbook in 1982 to launch myself as a career counselor. I've been writing ever since.

Here's what I like about writing. My dog comes to work with me. My bathrobe comes to work with me. I have an office in my house that's all mine, to decorate as I wish, mess up as I wish. If I feel inspired, I can write until 4:56 a.m while devouring a pint of Cherry Garcia ice-cream. If I don't feel inspired, I can work at another job for a while, until I quit, which I will (of course). Right now, I'm teaching English at a local college. I also freelance as a corporate trainer, an instructional designer, a technical writer, and a career counselor. I publish all sorts of things—from humor to travel articles to a self-help book based on Star Trek called Boldly Live as You've Never Lived Before.

I live with my husband of 24 years in the only blue-collar town in the ritzy Hamptons. We're five minutes from the beach, and we try to go every day, year round. We're still in romantic bliss, a fact that puzzles even us. It has something to do with the fact that we're both goofy, silly, irreverent, irresponsible, hedonistic, and too brainy. Also, we know when to vacation, when to go out to eat, and when to shirk our responsibilities in favor of fun. On those rare occasions when we do argue, our dog settles things by sitting on top of both of us and licking our faces until we laugh.

Which brings me back to where I started. My credo is "remember to breathe no matter how crazy things get, try not to do anything really bogus, try to stay away from bogus people, smile at everyone (even bogus people), and when things go haywire, as they will, wait, wait, wait—and when you can bear it, laugh."

You can reach Hiyaguha at hiyaguha@optonline.com.

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