Disappointments and Decisions

In a sense I'm a little bit ashamed of this, but I thought that I might as well write about it so that I will be able to look back at it in the fullness of time with some perspective ...

Today I received the news that I was unsuccessful in securing a position at [insert employer here]. This was deeply disappointing for me, since I felt that I was more than capable of doing the job, but was let down by my less than impressive interview. This job would have made my future a lot more certain than it currently is, which is something else that I am worrying about.

Tonight at about 9 o'clock, my mother rang me to see how I was feeling since I had called her earlier in the day to relay the bad news. Nothing much had changed and if anything I was feeling worse, given the time to think about things. I'm very hard to make me feel better at such a time, since I will tend to see anything reassuring that is said as a vacuous cliche - and so it was this time.

The thing is, [insert employer here] is currently having a National Recruitment Campaign. This is some degree of consolation, but it is still sobering to think that this process will take many months and I am currently very impatient after seven years of working to get to the point I am now, only to have to wait a little while longer. My mother told me that she "was sure" that I would get a job during this campaign. Such declarations make me feel rather ambivalent. On the one hand, I almost have this superstitious trust in my mother that if she believes that something will pass, it will, almost as though I believe that she has psychic powers. On the other hand, I realise that this is inherently silly and that she has no control whatsoever over the outcome. Rather dolefully, I asked her "What's your basis for that?" to which she replied that there was no basis, but that it was "a gut feeling".

Not to be beaten by this gut feeling, I decided to put my mother's gut feeling to the challenge. I made my counter-attack by making a fairly emphatic declaration that I wasn't and seeing just how serious she was in her conviction. Suffice to say, I now know how serious she is.

I only hope she's right.