Job

Hey – the agency where I applied for a peer support specialist position called me back for a follow-up interview, so I didn’t totally suck the first time. I went back – wearing a tie and a nerdy sweater-vest – for the second interview, which was way more intimidating, and now I’m in the giddy headspace of waiting to find out whether I got the job. I’m swinging back and forth between trying to figure out what art I wanna put up in my office and wondering which knife I should use to commit seppuku. It’s kinda like being on crazy drugs.

And I finally “finished” a literature review that I was supposed to have done a month ago for a bullshit class – “Organizational Research” – for the bullshit Bachelors degree program that I’m slogging through. I don’t believe in research papers, don’t give a rat fuck about the class and would be happy to see the “instructor” fall off a cliff, but I am being forced to do this paper anyway. I’m writing about the falling membership rates in the ELCA, which led to the decline of Christianity in the US, which led to the general decline of American society. It’s been depressing as all hell, but that’s what happens when I do research papers. I should’ve chosen another topic – like whether or not people should spay/neuter their cats. But I did what I did and I sent the douchebro instructor (he got no teaching degree – I think he got the job because he’s related to somebody) the sprawling litany of APA-cited collapse of a godless civilization that I wrote, and now I don’t have to think about that for the weekend.

So. Occasionally, I remember that I’m theoretically headed toward the ministry. I accidentally mentioned that in the job interview – then back-pedaled wildly. Ya never know if identifying yourself as a Christian is gonna disqualify you for a job. But I certainly didn’t act like someone who was gonna bother anyone with my traditional “belief” in a “God” or whatever, so hopefully it didn’t hurt my chances too much.

I read the daily meditations from Christ in Our Home and The Word in Season every morning, and sometimes I read the Psalm that is associated with the day. There are a lotta Psalms about how God will see us through persecution and get us to a better place, which is nice. Also, I been reading Job, which I used to hate because it seemed like God was being pretty mean to Job, but now I love it because that’s just the way it is. Sometimes everything is pretty shitty and there ain’t fuck-all you can do about it. and it ain’t necessarily your fault.

When I hated Job, it was because I thought my opinion mattered. I thought that I was qualified to decide how God should run things – which is exactly what the book of Job is about. The whole point of it is that we aren’t qualified to decide how God should run things. God is God, we ain’t. Which doesn’t make it easier for me to pay my bills, but does relieve me of the responsibility that I take on myself to figure shit out. I actually don’t have to worry or wonder about the job interview. I showed up on time and answered their questions and I didn’t cuss or put my feet on the desk or nothin’. I am qualified for the position, so I’ll get it or not. Then some other shit will happen and I’ll deal with that somehow. And I’ll keep on reading and praying and going to the 11am service on Sundays.

Being a neurotic, anxiety-filled recovering alcoholic with chronic depression isn’t always fun. But then I look at douchebros like the one “teaching” the class on organizational research and I think “would I rather be like that asshole? Sure, he’s confident and makes more money than me, but he’s also a craven coward who has never even considered the possibility that anything is not exactly how his formula says it should be. He believes all data sets because data sets tell him he should. He thinks he’s doing a great job because he’s doing the things that his research says he should do. When students ask him to explain the instructions, he reads the instructions to them because he believes the instructions are clear. He doesn’t know that the whole class thinks he sucks because that information doesn’t fit into his spreadsheet. But we do think he sucks. I’ve asked around.

I’d rather be who/what I am, and have God figure things out. I’m sure He’ll do better than I would. And maybe I’ll get the job.