One of the more fascinating things about growing older is you learn to appreciate the role random chance plays in your life.
    It’s popularly known as “The Butterfly Effect.”
    Wikipedia defines it as “the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state.” That horrendously written definition actually boils down to the common occurrence in which a small event in your life turns out to have big consequences, sometimes even many years later. (It’s more familiar as the title of a very weird Ashton Kutcher movie).
    It’s about the weird geometry of chance.
    There are a few events in my life that are classic butterfly effect—including how I ended up here.
    I had been looking for a new job for only a couple of weeks. Part of my search involved posting my resume on a site called Journalismjobs.com, which I had mostly used to find listings of jobs I could do.
    I hadn’t even begun looking outside of Iowa when I got an email from Russ Pankonin, telling me he had just posted the job that day. He said he searched the resumes and mine came up and invited me to call him if I was interested. I called him, we had a very nice conversation and, after a couple of more nice conversations, well, here I am.

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