Today just headbutted my optimism

Let's level- job hunting is lame.  It's a constant drain on my confidence, my time and is giant hurdle I have to get past before I can really have a future.  When I am not looking for a job, or meeting people who can help me get a job, I am thinking about it.  When I am job hunting, I am faced with jillions of jobs for which I am NOT a good fit.  There is nothing good about job hunting, and I know that, so I try REALLY hard to stay upbeat about it, to keep at it when I can and just cry about it when that's all the more I can do.  It makes me hypersensitive to my failures and reiterates my shortcomings (OMG- Did I just send that recruiter a note about an 'oppurtunity'??  What is wrong with me??). One of the best things about getting a job will be that I can stop looking.  Point made?  Ok, this is just the backdrop then to what might have seemed like a typical day at any other time in my life, but today just made me want to crawl back in bed.

It started out good- I applied for a job I really liked last night, and I was feeling anxious about how my application came across.  I put a lucky penny in my shoe today (because having my life feel out of my own control reinforces my superstitions) and headed out to my internship.  I was able to find a parking spot in South Lake Union, where I met a new team of investigators who are in crunch time about their upcoming grant.  And they are studying one of the few major diseases I don't know ANYthing about, and a class of regulated substances I am also totally naive about.  The manager just throws me in like I belong there, but it isn't long before everyone is throwing questions to "the market analyst" and "I will check that out too..." doesn't seem so helpful.  But no one stormed out of this meeting (unlike their last one- did I mention it was tense?), and I went back to our regular office.

Parking on campus is a drag, but I've found a lot nearby that usually has a spot for me- but today I didn't have the right change, because I left my $1 coins ...somewhere.  I decided to risk feeding half the money now, and half the money later when I broke a $20, because -dammit, I was ready to have a good day.  I had a networking meeting further down on campus, and for some reason I didn't bring a coat.  Obviously, it was raining cats and dogs.  The meeting was ok, but it reinforced that I am not doing enough to get something useful out of my internship.  And made me soaking wet.

Traffic was TERRIBLE.  When I got home, the cat managed to rip a hole in my work pants (of course, in the bum) while I started a late dinner (made even later by the fact that Matt is gone to CDL school).  And then I burned the speghetti sauce- I know, I didn't know that was possible either. 

Any other day I might say "I got a new project, I didn't get a parking ticket and I got to meet some new people," but not today.