17 Across: Triumph, but just barely

Something is wrong with the universe. I just finished a New York Times puzzle.

Maybe it's one of their easy puzzles, I don't know. But that was pretty weird.

I know a lot of people in my line of work -- newspaper journalists -- that are crossword puzzlers, but I never picked up the habit. One of my exes was something of a fanatic about her morning routine, which included doing (or at least starting) the puzzle out of the morning paper. Sometimes, I would pick up a half-finished puzzle and try filling in a few blanks, but I would usually lose interest in short order. I'd get bored, or frustrated, or be unsure of the spelling of some word and have no confidence of writing my guess in ink, so I'd toss the paper aside and do something -- anything -- else.

I don't know what possessed me to even start working on a puzzle today. But the lifestyle section of a paper from a few days ago was sitting here next to me and I picked it up and dove into the Sudoku puzzle. Those things, I'm mildly addicted to. In fact it's become part of my bedtime routine to do a few puzzles to empty my brain of other thoughts. I have a Sudoko game loaded on my iPod and I can do puzzles on there for hours until I either get tired of the games or get too physically tired that I doze off.

The Sudoku puzzle in the paper wasn't much of a challenge and I whipped through it pretty fast. I still had some time to kill, so I decided to try a few clues on the crossword. I got more clues than I expected and just kept going. Next thing I knew, all the squares were filled in.

I have a bit of a complex about writing out words, particularly longhand. I'm not a confident speller, and grammar isn't my strong suit either. I used to hate being called up in front of the class in school to write anything on the chalkboard. Maybe that's why I didn't pursue writing earlier in my life. I enjoyed writing but didn't aspire to study it or try to make a living with it because of the stigma about spelling. I took some newswriting classes in college because I had to to pursue my interest in newspaper photography as a major. But I figured the longest thing I'd every have to write was a photo caption after college. It turned out, I was wrong.

Thank God for computers and spellcheck programs. Still, I need an editor (as may be obvious from my posts).

That's my core paranoia. What if the other word folks around me will discover I'm an impostor. That I'm not a word person. I started off in journalism as a photographer. There was no conscious plan to become a reporter/editor. Years ago, when I was between jobs, I had an opportunity to work as a reporter on a fill-in basis for a paper that had a vacancy. The voyage to the word-side was supposed to be temporary. As an ambitious (and poorly paid) reporter, I aspired to move up and became an editor.

Now, after nearly 18 years working as a writer and editor, I'm finding that maybe I'm a little bit more of a word person than I've ever really bothered to give myself credit for being. Most people I've worked with in my career have only known me as a word guy. They don't know that my own self image is that I'm a picture taker who's pulling a fast one on everyone.

It's funny to wake up one morning and realize the person in the mirror isn't the person you thought you'd find. Sometimes you expect to find a Sudoku puzzler and discover a crossword puzzler instead.