Mental Cobwebs

Tonight I will be returning to the Meijer warehouse where I was supposed to be interviewed last week an attempt once again to actually be interviewed. Hopefully the person who scheduled my interview will actually be there this time to interview me. And if so, I will try my best to make a good impression.

Look, it's not that I'm being pessimistic when I don't expect much from these types of things, I just don't like to get my hopes up. In the last few years while searching for a better job -- one that might actually allow us to get our own house -- I've been disappointed frequently. I've had several job prospects that seemed to be sure-fire, and as soon as I let myself believe that everything was going to work out and our lives were going to improve, it blew up in my face.

So, I take good news with a grain of salt nowadays. Zoe thinks I'm being negative and I need to have a positive attitude. It's not that I'm going into the job interview all mopey and depressed and telling them I don't expect them to hire me, I'm just giving my emotional state a parachute in case I fall on the climb to success.

I do things like this a lot and I've learned that it does pretty well for me. I disassociate with things that might cause me to plummet emotionally, because it's too hard for me to climb back up from that pit of depression. When I have a big fight with someone, I distance myself from them and never again invest myself in them emotionally. Should they say or do something hurtful again, it's cool because I was expecting it and wasn't attached to them anymore anyway.

When I allow myself to get too attached to a relationship or idea and it blows up in my face, I'm a useless lump of flesh for weeks afterwards. I don't want to do anything productive, I just want to lay around, play video games, and snuggle with my kid. When the last "sure thing" jobs fell through, I fell into a pit of not wanting to do anything related to job hunting for a long time. In not letting myself get my hopes up I'm trying to prevent that from happening again.

Unfortunately my wife doesn't really understand that I'm well aware this strategy works for me and will not adversely effect the interview, so she's been running around acting excited about it and buying me new dress shirts and ties to use on the interview. It's been pretty hard to not expect much when she's so excited for it, so if it blows up in our face I will likely not spring back very well. Now I want it, for her. I don't want her to be disappointed. I tried my best to keep my emotional investment in this potential job as far back as possible, but my emotional investment in my wife did a sneak attack.

So, if I seem particularly grumpy and annoyed with things in the next few days, you'll know I didn't get the job and I failed to keep myself from getting too invested in it. I apologize in advance.