Good News

My job search has sucked. Royally and often. It has had me incredibly frustrated, annoyed, depressed, and even outright angry at times. But I have always, in spite of all of that, been confident. I am a good person and a good therapist, DAMMIT, and someone would eventually see that and give me a job.

Don't get excited. I haven't got a job. Yet.

I'm just trying to set the stage so you fully understand the depths of my insanity. Despite almost 5 months of no offers and scarce interviews, I felt 100% certain that I would eventually find something I loved. It was just taking longer than I wanted.

Sure enough, in the last several days I have been called in on 3 interviews. All at places that I was genuinely excited to be (possibly) working for, not just something I would feel I had to take because I need money. Good news, right? I had the first of these 3 interviews this morning, and had been floating on air leading up to it. Surely, with that much saturation, I'll get at least one offer! I mean, I'm awesome, after all! I thanked my interviewer and stood up to leave feeling like I had rocked the house. I was confident, calm, well-spoken, and downright charming.

By the time I reached my car, everything in me told me that today is the day I fail. That I'm not good at this, they hated me, and I won't get an offer. That even if I do manage to wrangle a job, 2 days in they will see how incompetent I am and I'll be right back out.

(source)

It's hard for me to convey just how sudden and overwhelmingly this wave of complete self-doubt and self-loathing hit me. And I have no goddamn idea why.

I've been struggling with myself for a little while now, feeling down. I have explained it away in the past few weeks. I cry into my pillow because I am constantly anxious about how my lack of employment will ultimate spiral into a pit of debt and homelessness until I die at age 37 in a cardboard box in an alley somewhere. Thank my mother for those kind of mental digressions that take the smallest misstep and turn it into life-ending tragedy. But except for the dramatic conclusion, it didn't really seem to be that unusual to feel down about out about being unemployed. As I've said, even over the summer, I've felt sad about it, just confident it would eventually resolve. Now even that has passed and part of me wonders, given my history, if there isn't something more going on here. Because clearly, feeling like a complete failure after making some progress for the first time in months is not a rational reaction.

I don't know if I've yet mentioned Dooce here, but if you've checked my profile you know I follow her blog. She has posted something this time of year for the past several years about how the changing light in fall and spring (season changes) can negatively affect the mental/emotional state of some people. I never figured I was one of them, being that I'd never noticed the pattern before. However, I never notice patterns when it comes to my own health. I've been menstruating for about 15 years now. Safe to say I'm an expert. But it was only in the past couple of months that I finally put together my chronic headaches are associated with my period. So in thinking back, really thinking on it, I've realized that phenomenon might just apply to me.

(source)

I always get nostalgic in Autumn because academia is the thing I've always been confident in, always been good at. So I'll start thinking back to those happy days of starting a new school year - even when I was still in school, as I have been almost every year until this one - and get a little melancholic. Some days are worse than others, but it always passed by about November. I feel a little lost in Spring as well, and always blamed it on a sort of general anxiety about upcoming tests or projects or job hunts (summer jobs or full-time). Maybe, just maybe, it's something more.

(source)

Frankly, even if it's not - and I'm not likely to know since I don't and likely won't see a professional - I'd really like to blame the seasonal change anyway. At least then I can explain it. Point to something and say, "This. This is the answer to why I fall asleep on a tear-stained pillow, or sleep all day, or don't want to talk to anyone, even though nothing has happened." It's reassuring, in the midst of irrational emotions, to find the answer to a question I didn't know I had.