Trite?  Stale?  Yeah, but.  I never thought much about this phrase till just now.  It’s the first thing that came to me, so I’m going with it.

I had another job interview this morning.  Now it’s 5:00 p.m., and I just got another e-mail informing me that someone else is far more qualified for that job than I am.  Now, ordinarily that’s not enough to get my panties in a bunch.  But I’ve been getting a lot of these e-mails lately.  And this job is a one-month temporary, 20 hour per week, $12 an hour clerical support position I could do blindfolded with both hands tied behind my back.

I could understand if it was a permanent, benefited position–I’m way, waaaaaay overqualified for it.  I wouldn’t even have applied in the first place.  I have a bachelor’s degree and like twenty years’ worth of administrative support experience.   But.  It’s.  Temporary.  Who could possibly do this job better than me for a month?  Who?  You can see how this would prey upon my mind.

I know I’m blowing this way out of proportion and letting it get me down.  It’s completely pointless to waste more than a nanosecond of emotional energy on that e-mail.  But it’s like one of those final straw things.

This is the second time in two years I’ve had to go on unemployment.  It’s not humiliating or anything–quite the contrary.  I deeply appreciate my government making it available to me and so many others who’ve lost their jobs through no fault of their own.  But I do hate having to utilize it.  And I hate having to be in job-search mode AGAIN.  If you’ve been there over and over like I have, you know it gets old real fast.

But this all brings me to the subject line:  today is the first day of the rest of my life.  I have a wonderful life.  And here I am sitting at the kitchen table in sweatpants, flip-flops and a t-shirt doing something I’ve thought about for years.  This is definitely better than working.

And just look how happy my dog is.