I need chocolate. In fact, I need chocolate more than anything else in the world right now. In a moment I’m going to take my depressed body downstairs to the vending machine and buy myself some chocolate and try to forget about being depressed. It probably won’t work, but I need something right now.
The prospective employer won’t meet my salary request. In fact, they won’t even go to the range we were discussing at the interview. Which is, of course, depressing. Stupid, really, since I didn’t want the job anyway. But I wanted them to want me enough to pay me whatever I asked for. And that’s crazy because I’m not that hot a commodity yet. I wanted the ego boost and I didn’t get it.
The university’s counter-offer to the rather dismal job offer I got is even more dismal. It hardly rates taking a look at it. In fact, I wish none of this had ever happened. I wish that I had never gotten the call for the interview, never interviewed, never let myself get my hopes up on getting a better situation than I have now. It’s just too cruel for words, too suffocating to realize that I have absolutely no control over the outcome.
If I were still going out with HIM I’d give him a call, go over to his apartment after work and let him make me forget that I’m in such a shitty mood. But that’s not an option. Damn! When I need someone to lift my spirits it happens to be in the middle of my no-dating season.
I feel cheated, somehow, as if something that was promised to me wasn’t done. As if something was given to me and taken away. How can I feel so badly over something I didn’t want anyway? I didn’t want the job at the City of Houston to begin with. I especially don’t want it for the salary they’re offering. But the counter-offer by the university is just making me think that the whole thing is a joke from above to remind me to be humble. As if looking at my checkbook couldn’t keep me humble enough.
If I force myself to look at the bright side, which I don’t want to do, then I still end up with more money for doing a job I like. And I wasn’t ready to start looking elsewhere for a position anyway. I know that. I _know_ that. But it doesn’t make me feel any better.
I needed the extra money. Still need it.
What do I do? I stay at the university a few more months. Get my portfolio together, spruce up my resume and do the interview thing. That was the plan from the beginning. Depressing as it sounds to me right now (and everything sounds depressing to me right now except for that chocolate I’m going to look for) I need to look outside the university.
Well, let me go for that chocolate.
