Rejection aka the job search

Recently I brought my car in for its annual pap smear, or what they call it in the state tax world: Safety and Emissions. I knew before I got the results back that our car would not pass. We had a crack in the windshield the size of two mini football fields. The crack started the day after my husband lost his job. Which is, coincidentally, about the same time that our dishwasher and refrigerator broke. From experience I can say that knowing that I’m going to fail beforehand does not alleviate the pain of failing. The same was true for the car inspection. The bolded 150 point text reading REJECTED was on the state inspection paper, but it was really as if it were written on my forehead in a cruel and melodramatic way. As if each letter bored into my eyeballs and the recesses of my brain and burned onto my forehead with laser point accuracy, etched from the inside out. 

That is what job searching feels like. However, the rejection is so much more personal when looking for a job. So much more deep. How can it not be? You’re baring your soul again and again saying please take me. Have me. I’ll give you everything you want. And the person being offered your world just looks at you point blank and says no thanks, there is someone better than you.

Better than me?! How can anyone be better than me? I am confident! I am educated! I am passionate! I am... “intense”? You think that I am intense? You don’t like me because I’m intense? Oh. I see what you’re saying. I am intense. It’s bad to be intense. You have every reason not to want me because I’m intense. Why does anyone like me? Do my friends and family think that? Maybe I should just stay in bed today. Just until my personality changes. I don’t want to be intense.

REJECTED. 

The fact is that I’m right for someone. I was right for my husband, or so I like to think. I will be right for my future employer, because someone will value my intensity. My mom always did say people would like me just as I am (and she was right surprisingly often.) How much do I need to change to fit the needs of some unknown entity? How much do I need to fake in order to get accepted into an organization? How does one fake being non-intense? People do, I’m sure, but I don’t know how (weed probably). I’ve never been one for theatrics. 

So I’ll stay in my warm flannel knee length polka dot pajamas until noon. I’m going to allow my furry pink and white mid-calf length socks to soak up warmth and healing to the very depths of my soul. Yes, even intense people have souls. I’ll don my running clothes and lick my wounds while I burn off my frustrations. I’ll come home, take a shower, then hit the job search market again. Next time I will be less intense, but today I will harness my intensity to shake off my rejection and persevere.