Have you ever have had a Mary-Tyler-Moore-hat-tossing-“you’re gonna make it after all” moment?

If so, please describe it to me in a short email (kate@workstew.com) and I’ll include it in a compilation I’m pulling together. To kick us off, see the first few contributions below.

Meanwhile, listen to the song, and weep happy tears.

Illustration by Ty Mattson.

It was 1992. I was 23 years old. I had moved from San Diego to New York City a few months before. The day was bright and cold, particularly to this California girl. I had just secured a job after months of searching and had made a few friends. I was crossing a busy street—all these years later I don’t remember which street. Maybe Park Avenue and something in the 60s. I lived on 67th Street on the East Side. I felt particularly buoyant and hopeful about the future. I was giggling with my new co-worker and friend about who knows what. I stopped in the middle of the street, cabs flying by, people giving me dirty looks, tossed my knit cap into the air and cried out, “I’m gonna make it after all!” That part I remember like it was yesterday.

—Trish Bittman

My hat-tossing moment came when I was 24. It was May, I was finishing grad school, living on $500 a month, almost out of savings, no job in sight.  I had been trying for three years to land my dream job as a foreign service officer—a goal I had set when I was 16. The phone rang and the voice on the other end of the line told me I had been selected for the next FSO class, starting in June, and where should they send my hiring paperwork?  I managed to stay professional until I hung up the phone, and then I just screamed for about a minute straight. For the next hour I sat in front of a sunny window and basked in the feeling that I had made it, and everything was going to be all right after all.

—Suzanne Veta