Talk about the passion

Everyone knows that when you interview for a position you’re not entirely yourself.  I’m not saying you lie during interviews.  At least I don’t and I hope you don’t either, since you’re competing with me for jobs.  But while we don’t lie, of course what we present isn’t entirely representative of ourselves.  If it were, introverts would never get jobs.  Nor would anyone who dares to want a job for the money more than anything.  And since people need money to, you know, live, there aren’t many people for whom the money isn’t one of the top draws.  And then there are people like me who are just desperate to have a full time job in a horrible economy, but we’re sure as hell not allowed to be honest about being desperate.  No, if we had to show our true faces during an interview, no one would ever work.

So what’s the hardest part for me to fake?  I can hide my desperation, I hope.  At least, I don’t come right out and say I’m desperate, or that I need the job, or I need the money.  I can also generally hide the fact that I’m shy, given that there’s not much chance for me to show that I am.

Nope, I would say the hardest thing for me to fake is passion.  Having to act like “Oh my God, I LOVE being a librarian and it makes me so HAPPY to do this!”

 I used to be able to feel something like that long ago, before my current job broke my spirit by degrading me in every way at every opportunity.  But even back then the feeling would be ephemeral.  The truth is, I am not a passionate person.  Not about anything.  In fact, I’ve gone my whole life wondering if there was something wrong with me because it seems like everyone else can feel so strongly for things, and I never could.  I can enjoy things, but not enough that I’d want to do them for the better half of my waking day, five days a week, no matter how I feel and no matter what else I could be doing.  I can’t understand the mentality of anyone who could love anything that much.

There are things I can say I used to have a passion for, but I couldn’t sustain it.  Art, for example.  I was one of those kids who was always in at least two art classes any given semester throughout high school.  Then it just stopped, and when it did it was like a light switch.  One day art was my thing, and the next day I had no desire to draw or paint, and I knew I never would again.  And I never did.  Sorry I never used that easel you bought me, grandma.

I have no tattoos and I strongly doubt I ever will, because there’s nothing I care about so much that I’d want it on my body for the rest of my life.  Honestly, I kind of think people are idiots when they get band tattoos, because surely someday they’ll be 40 and explaining “oh yeah, that’s just the logo of some band I used to be really into.”  But band logos aside, some people apparently just love some things so much and know they always will to the point that they’ll draw it on themselves permanently.  And I know I never will.

When I first started to do fieldwork, I got a rush from helping people directly.  Instruction work made me feel like a rock star.  Now?  I spend every moment I’m not at work dreading going to work.  If I could have sustained that passion under normal conditions, I sure as hell couldn’t do it working in a place like this.

But I know that when I go into an interview, I have to spend all of my energy trying to put myself back in a place where I had that passion and enthusiasm, when in reality all I really want is to get a full time salary so I can live whatever little scraps of life I’m allowed to have on a full time schedule, and if I’m really lucky, do it in a place that doesn’t degrade me on a daily basis.  I just want to live my life and get by, that's all.  Yet there I am, forcing myself to pretend to be upbeat and enthusiastic for half an hour or more.

And it is fucking exhausting.

I still think there’s something wrong with me.  I still don’t understand why I can’t feel like normal people.  Why I’m so fucking broken that I can’t love things and activities unconditionally.  I can find interests, I can enjoy things, but there will never be anything that I eat, breathe, and sleep, and want to be my life.  Never.

What piece of the soul am I missing that everyone else has?