There are moments in life when you’re absolutely positive that one thing will happen, yet against all odds, something entirely unexpected occurs. That’s basically the story of how I ended up purchasing an Xbox Series S in a nutshell. I recall months of following various Twitter accounts to clue me into stock drops at various retailers, only to see the “Out of Stock” message appear within seconds of clicking the link. I would have never expected to be able to purchase a next-generation console on a whim, but here we are, $325 later, and a new Xbox is on its way to me.

There was a few months where I was pursuing one of these plastic monoliths in a pretty obsessive way, but every time a notification would pop up on my phone and I clicked it, all I’d end up securing was a vast amount of disappointment. So one day I decided to scale back and just stop trying so hard. I stopped following every stock-checking Twitter account I had latched onto, turned off all notifications and moved on with my life. But I did continue to follow one account that posts deals from all across the gaming landscape and not just consoles. Turns out, that was right move.

I woke up the other morning and eventually got around to checking up on social media to see what horrors occurred in the world in the past 7 hours or so that was unconscious. I came across a post from this Twitter account that just indicated that Microsoft was selling the Xbox Series S on their site. Unfortunately that post was from 9 hours ago, so I probably missed out on it, but I figured I’d click anyway just to confirm it for myself.

The weirdest thing happened: The site didn’t say “Out of Stock” like it usually did, instead it just read, “Add to Cart,” which I earnestly assumed to be a glitch or something. Jokingly, I clicked it, all the while knowing that this would error out and show me the way out. But gosh dang-it, the site just sent me to the cart where one of these elusive consoles was just chilling and waiting for me. “This can’t happen,” I thought. “The listing went up last night, there’s just no way,” I continued to say as I signed into my PayPal account to finalize the purchase.

So I filled out all the information and pressed the final confirmation button, still fully expecting for this to not work. But lo-and-behold the transaction went through, and I was left sitting there, slack-jawed at the concept that I could, nine hours later, just purchase this console I wasn’t really looking to ever buy so easily. Surely an email would come in and say that my order couldn’t be completed or something, right? Nope, I have a tracking number and everything now and I still don’t believe that this actually happened.

As of writing this, I don’t have the console just yet. It’ll allegedly arrive on the day this blog goes up, but that remains to be seen. This may not seem as buck-wild of a story as I think it is, but it’s important to contextualize it all with just how fanatical about finding a next-generation console I was. Maybe I just got lucky because no one is really frothing at the mouth for a Series S, but I literally don’t know if that’s even true or not, that’s just me spouting conjecture at this point. All I know is that I’m surprisingly excited to receive this thing, and terrified of the idea that it’s being shipped as is and not in a discreet box.

In preparation for my new toy, I’ve reorganized my entertainment center which was basically me unplugging the dust-covered Xbox 360 that was on it and chucking it into storage, as well as giving that severely neglected piece of furniture a good cleaning. I also decided to upgrade my Game Pass subscription from the overpriced PC only version, to the slightly more expensive Game Pass Ultimate, which upon further reflection, is an incredible deal. So yeah, that’s the story of how I played chicken with a website and lost so badly that I ended up $325 dollars poorer, but I do get one of them new-fangled viddy-James boxes out of it. Well, allegedly, I’m still not convinced it’s actually on its way to me. I’ll update this post either way when the time comes.

UPDATE: It’s actually here. Weird.