The recession broke me. My life coach says he can fix me.

That’s right, I said “my life coach says…” Get used to it. My friends have.

Thanks to my loving brother, I now have a life coach. It just so happens that he won four sessions with one at an auction recently, and thought to himself: “who needs it more than my poor, confused, out-of-work little sister”? After all, he has his life all squared away, what with his fancy job and a fiancée who is totally out of his league.

At first I was skeptical – self-improvement is so not my style. I prefer to just fret over my shortcomings and wallow in self-pity. And what could a perfect stranger possibly tell me about myself that I don’t already know?

But alas, now is not the time for cynicism. I decided to give it a shot – what do I have to lose? You see, my recent unemployment has forced me to step back and re-evaluate my career (and life) goals, and the steps I must now take to achieve them. Perhaps a little bit of help in doing so is not such a bad thing. Thanks big bro!

So I met TJ at a Starbucks in LA (how appropriate), as part of our initial consultation. I mostly just answered a slew of questions and talked about myself for an hour. What a fun activity for a narcissist!

At the end of our session, he gave me my first assignment – maybe you can help, friends? I have to define myself in one word. As in, “I am blank.” And it can’t be an adjective (I already tried “confused”, “curious”, “suicidal” – no go). He, for example, is a “change agent”. What am I? I have no freakin idea. Poor TJ has his work cut out for him.

Anyway, I have a couple of weeks to figure it out – in the meantime, he is available to me any time by text, email and telephone. How fantastic is that?! I will try to resist the urge to text him at 4am to tell him I’m having an emergency existential crisis.

I should probably go and get started on my homework. Check back regularly for updates…