Cold comfort, farmed

Time flies when...

...you're answering every question you can possibly think of about AppleMacs but were too afraid to ask.

Yes, I got the job.

But it's all a bit weird. Y'see, I'm terribly aware of how I'd probably have felt had I not got the job. Like there was a big Canadian conspiracy to get rid of me. Like there was no point. Like I might as well take the next job interview naked for all the good my carefully-chosen interview garb did.

But I got it. So, I'd expected a reaction much more positive in nature, but with the equivalent severity to the negative ones I'd had before.

That didn't happen. I didn't do cartwheels down Danforth Avenue. A smile didn't appear on my face that I couldn't remove, no matter how hard I tried. I didn't, in the words of Saturday Night Live's Andy Samburg, "...jizz in my pants."

In my mind, it felt only as if a box had been ticked.

Friends and family were much more effusive, and helped me to catalogue all those things that I was starting to feel a bit peeved I was missing: relief; adulation; excitement; pride; etc. This led to another discussion about Venlafaxine with my shrink, where I asked whether this drug and it's family surpressed negative moods in particular, or strong moods in general. It's the former of the two, something I hadn't credited this particular med with.

I'm now in the beginning of my third week at the Mac store. And yet, there's still no glimmer of satisfaction or self-...self-...whatever the antonym of self-loathing is. Jeez, I don't even know the vocabulary of a happy person LOL! Perhaps jobs aren't something I get excited about. Maybe it's just because I'm healthier now than I was the last time I got snubbed, and thus less affective.

This could be true. When I began the job I expected that all my existing fears about never getting a job in Canada again would simply morph into new fears about being fired from my new job. That didn't happen either, which is a pretty seminal improvement. People ask me what I worry unduly about, usually when they're trying to get their head around what the "generalised" part of generalised anxiety disorder means. The whole point is that it can be anything. Literally anything. Pull on a white T-shirt and you'll fret that you'll receive an impromptu lunch request from an old friend in town for the day, who will take you to the one restaurant that only serves spaghetti. Receive a look from a member of the opposite sex, and you'll assume there's something green and slimy making an ill-timed bid for freedom from your left nostril. Receive a compliment at work, and you'll assume the person is just being charitable because they're trying to divert attention away from something monstrously career-limiting that you did or said only minutes before.

As I've said before, the trouble with GAD is that what you worry about is limited only by the boundaries of your own imagination. Were I an amoeba, I probably wouldn't have much to worry about: I never read or see anything about mental health problems in amoebas, so it must be true.

When I think about it though, it's a win-win situation. If I suddenly come over all gleeful then that'll be great. There aren't many things that could or will happen to me that'll cause the jig of joy. If the euphoria gets lost in the mail then I must be on the mend, unless my logic is flawed somewhere.

I still have that feeling though. The feeling you have when you realise you want to return something to the store, but threw out the receipt five minutes earlier. I'll happily find cold comfort somewhere in that though, because it's better than the alternatives.