I had a job interview this morning for a company that needs a photo coordinator. It would be full time, which would be great right about now. I've gone on many job interviews and auditions, and once I'm actually in the process of the interview or the monologue or cold read or whatever, I'm at ease. It's the getting to and returning from that wig me the hell out.
One of the first things I find myself doing is planning what my life would be like with a new job or a new play. It might seem proactive, or the trait of someone with a positive attitude and plenty of confidence, but it's covering up a huge wad of anxiety. "This will surely be The Thing that changes my life in all the right ways, and here are all the things that will be different because of this one new Thing!" I start memorizing the route to the building, start thinking about where I'll go for lunch, start wondering if I can get the same parking space every day. Pretty soon, I associate all of that nervous energy with the drive itself, or the music I'm listening to on the way there, or what I was wearing, and if things go badly, I disassociate from those things immediately. (I actually have a bit of a shit-list of music I can't listen to anymore for fear of triggering some cosmic force of smite and wrath that will actively seek out the parts of my life that don't suck and destroy them with lightning and misery.) Then, on the way back home, I repeat the whole process... in the few moments when I'm not obsessively nit-picking over every nuance of the interview or audition.
You would think that the solution would be to down-play the whole ordeal. "This is simply a job interview/an audition, and does not completely define the rest of your life. It is one moment, and will be a constructive process no matter the outcome; it is by practicing uneasy moments that they become easier." Yeeeeeeeah, nooooooooo. I downplay things, and it only makes things worse, because by the time I realize I've been playing it cool, I have also realized how desperate I am and how much I needed something and how badly I was counting on The Thing to help me out of the miserable goop of depression and fear and stress that feels like it's slowly absorbing my being.
Why does any of this thinking matter? It matters because it becomes behavior that actively shapes the choices I make and the direction my life is going. I get too caught up in the subtleties of a moment, and dwell on them so long that they lose perspective and become twisted with new meaning, like, "You crossed your hands on the desk, which probably made you look too severe and judgmental, so you should never do that again", or, "You went to the grocery store afterwards but before you heard if you got the job or not, so if you don't get the job, you can never go there again." (See a pattern developing?) I even put off writing about all this because I won't hear about this job until later this evening or even tomorrow, and that's several hours of me going slightly insane, during which I will likely do something that I will associate with a good or bad outcome after I find out if I have a job or not.
I am a believer in the idea that your external world is a reflection of your internal status, and that your thoughts have a measurable impact on your surroundings. It might seem a bit magical, but it's also part of human nature... wanting to matter, wanting to feel like one little thing has more power than it probably does because it helps you get through the day. It's also an idea that can get me into trouble quickly. Objectively, I know I was professional and engaging and a good candidate for this job, but that gets tucked away into a dusty box in the bottom drawer of a far-removed filing cabinet in an unused office that smells faintly of sawdust and mold so that I have plenty of room to go crazy.
Just yesterday, I found myself saying that I feel like I'm being punished for taking a chance a few months earlier and quitting a steady job (even though it was horrible) to pursue my lifelong dream of becoming a professional actor and singer, because now I am in a worse position than I have been in a long time. I feel like I'm either being completely ignored by the one Being that could help me, or I am being picked on by the one Being that could help me because I made a mistake. That is a shitty way to live, and I would really really really like some proof that I'm wrong about this.
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