Now that I think about it… When people ask me what I do for a living, I usually just keep it vague, by simply saying, “I work from home.”

I’ve learned that most of the time, people don’t really have follow-up questions anyway.

What do I do for a living? I work from home.

It was twenty years ago today, on January 2nd, 2006; that I accidentally began my career… as a recruiter.

I hire diesel mechanics (and previously truck drivers) from all across the country for the company I work for. It’s basically a sales job under the division of HR. Every month, I have a monthly quota to fill, but it doesn’t stress me out at all. I am motivated by the challenge. I love what I do!

I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was more than halfway through college before I landed on majoring in English; after discovering I was the only guy in my entire dorm who actually liked writing papers and actually enjoyed speech class.

Did I have a passion for it? No.

Did it come easy for me so that I ended up graduating on the Dean’s List, despite nearly failing basic college math and science classes my freshman year? Yes.

Shortly after moving to Nashville, I decided to visit a temp agency to see if they could find me some gigs to do, in addition to my part-time job I had unloading trucks for Fed-Ex.

At the end of my first day on the first assignment they gave me, I asked the employer how long the job would be for… assuming the answer would be just a week or two.

Instead, the supervisor for that job responded, “Well, actually… permanently.” So I just went along with that answer for the next 12 and a half years, until the company eventually closed down the office at that location.

At that point, I had accumulated well over a decade of experience, so naturally, another company snatched me up to fill their recruiter position. And now, I’ve been at my current company for over 7 and a half years.

It sounds weird to say out loud: As of today, I have 20 years of recruiting experience.

Now I’m imagining the absurdity of the current version of me traveling back in time to tell the college freshman version of myself:

“Okay, so just get an English degree and then once you graduate college, take the first full-time job you are offered, which will be in recruiting. That’s what you’ll be doing for a living. Oh, yeah… and at some point, you’ll be able to start doing your job much more efficiently by never  even going to an office and instead, working from your house.”

Yeah, that definitely would have sounded like someone from the future talking to me.