This is why I hate leaving my house these days: shame. When I go to the grocery store (or any other place in my small hometown), people who may have known me in the past invariably ask me one thing:
"Hey, how's the job hunt going?"
This is what I want to say: "Pretty awful, considering I'm here in the grocery store in the middle of the day with my mom. If I were successful, I would be working right now and not running up and down the aisles looking for cumin." I mostly blame my mother who has established herself as a minor celebrity here. Going to the grocery store tacks on an additional half an hour to what would have been an ordinary supply run.
What I actually say: "Well...not so great." I refuse to give them the satisfaction of knowing that I have failed. Me, failing. It's so improbable. It's the curse of the valedictorians -- trust me, there have been studies that show that valedictorians tend to be slightly less successful because of their low propensity to take the risks required for great success.
"Oh, that's too bad." They cringe before their eyes nearly pop out of their head with pride. "My son so-and-so has got plenty of offers."
Way to rub it in, jerk. I don't care how many offers so-and-so received because for all I know they could be for selling insurance. If I wanted to sell insurance, I would have no problem doing it. But I don't. So I don't care.
This morning I emailed a bunch of alums and applied to about 25 more jobs. Will it work? I'm already exhausted, but I'm learning that maybe I should just enter the dying industries that I love: publishing and media. Boom. Why was I even bothering wasting my time with everything else? Pride and pressure. So much pressure to do what sounds difficult to me. Maybe it only sounded difficult because I never wanted to do it in the first place.
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