Well, it happened

While I haven't heard either way about the Nintendo job, I've given up.

My co-worker Heather thinks that, for a major corporation that was still interviewing last week, they still could get back with me soon.

But to be honest, it's over. If I haven't heard back by now, two weeks after the phone interview, then it's a good chance I'm getting that slim envelope in the mail saying that while I was a very qualified candidate, the company has decided to continue the job search without me. Of course, it will go on to say, the company will keep my resume on file.

As if anyone who wasn't qualified for one job will get picked up for a similar job. If you are out once at a company, you're done.

A couple posts ago, I said I had come grips with the fact that I'm not going to be chosen to play in Mario Land full time. I was calm. I was cool. I was even gracious, hoping the dream gig landed in the lap of a person who had been out of work and panicking about the future. Me, I had a job already. I have a wife, two cats and a good life, relatively speaking.

Well, sometime this afternoon, I said fuck it to all that and nearly came close to telling everyone I know to fuck off, picking up my office phone and hurling it against the wall, hoping to see the black, molded talk box explode in a shower of plastic and wires.

It's been building. Everyday since the Monday after my face-to-face interview, I have kept my cell phone within inches of my grasp, occasionally staring down into the LCD display, willing the little gold-colored wanker to ring. I'd smile as I read the caller ID with the 425 area code. It could only be the big N, asking me back. I had a prepared routine for when I answered the phone.

"Oh, hello...Yes, hello, Lena (HR person at N)...Fine, you?...No, I understand, you had an army of candidates to get through...Yes...I would love to...Friday's the best for me...3:30 sounds great, do I need to bring anything...Okay...Same building?...I'll be meeting with Melinda...Excellent...Can't wait...Take care, bye."

To quote the narrator from "Fight Club," I'd like to thank the Academy...

But, no. Nothing...not even a squeak, unless it was my wife calling. Here I am, staring down at the cell phone, and nothing. I'm thinking a million different desires, all pointed the same way toward Redmond and toward a set of squat, white office buildings where the occupants inside are serious about having fun. I'm so right for the job. It's so me...why don't they call?

Every morning, I tell myself that it doesn't matter. I try deep, repetitive suggestions when I'm in that cotton-candy phase between sleeping and being awake. I repeat to myself that N is a minor thing. See beyond the ideas of job and career and focus on the larger picture. N is not important as you think.

And it was all going well until three things happened yesterday, in this order.

First, I got an e-mail from my friend Cori, who was going through a funk about turning 30 and feeling like her life is over. She was harboring the idea that she needs to do something more grown-up, like being married or having a baby.

Second, one of the alternative weekly newspapers printed a story saying that our crosstown rival was about to destroy us through some joint operating agreement clause that both our companies share. (It's a long story)

Third, my wife, who has been in the eye of Hurricane Nintendo since the inception, sent me an e-mail today saying, in brief, that if I didn't hear from the big N, then it's a good bet I'm not in the running.

And that, as clinical therapists would put it, is when I went ape shit.

Pulling together different elements from each thing, like I was some compound in a chemical reaction, I shoved all the worst aspects of them into my brain, which was acting like a jilted lover over the Big N affair already.

I imagined I was out on the streets, going broke and without hope for a job. I couldn't get in as a copy editor (something I should know how to do) at a place that was interested in me. I couldn't survive in this market, in this economy.

Imagine these ideas being pounded into your head with a jackhammer, and you get the idea of the fire that bubbles in my brain sometimes.

It’s times like this when I feel as if I don’t have a future, that my life is over, and I’m stuck on the ass-end of all my life choices. I act like a trapped animal, internally raging and seething at my own capture.

It goes back to me hating myself for not being perfect, being told once by a girl I really liked that I was boring. The Big N chase was about more than a job, it occurs to me. I'm looking at the job as a sign that out of all the others out there, out of all the candidates, I'm the one that's most desired. Even though I have proof of this in the form of a wedding ring on my left hand, I just needed this. I need to know that, if I lost my job tomorrow, I could find safe haven somewhere else. I could find a place that would welcome me in, appreciating what I bring to the table. I wanted to be sought out, courted, lured.

And yet, I can't help but think of Patrick Farley's "The Guy I Almost Was," a story about a path not taken because fate stepped in, most likely for the better. It goes to show that you could have a plan of attack all set up, and then you get dealt a curve. Luckily for me, that curve always has me landing on my feet. But earlier today, I didn't think that at all.

So, here I am, future uncertain and back to working at a mundane job that allows me the opportunity to write and blog when I have a free moment. I don't know what's going to happen to me. N could still call and my company could offer me something better. Our office could stay open for another 100 years.

Some people have the belief that an unknown future is really the best. You can make anything happen. For a long time, I've been scared of change, not knowing what's coming and being resentful for it. And I've been putting a lot of my identity into my job, understandable since that's one of the last vestiges of conquest left for the common man.

It’s a strange thing to ponder, as I suck on the bittersweet juices of giving up something that I want. Before I didn’t have an idea of the future and was fine with it. Now, I have a future and I feel weak and helpless, out of touch and impotent to the things around me. Like Farley’s alter ego, I always assumed the future would reconcile itself. Now that it hasn’t, I’m standing on my own two feet, looking into a fog.

And the fear I feel tells me a lot more than I bargained for.

I’m not good when it comes to change. I’m not trained in sculpting my life to reach some goal. I’m afraid of challenge and I’m lacking vision about what I want to do now. No, wait. I have the vision, but not the will.

I feel stuck, or worse; I feel like I’m sinking.

I was counting on the big N to give me a change instead of me making a change in my own life. Maybe I should have not relied on N for the change. I should go get it and not wait on others.

There’s a restlessness in me. I keep saying I need more in my life, but I lack the will to find it. As I suspect with Cori, I’m growing bored somehow.

But now I have to get off my ass and do it.

And, you know, N owes me an answer soon. No matter what you say about corporate hiring practices, they should pull the damn trigger already and let everyone know who is in and who isn’t.