Schrödinger's Catalyst

You know why I don't like "putting myself out there?" Because it forces the issue.  It begs the question.  It demands a snap judgment.  And all too often those judgments of late have been "No," "Not interested," and "Look somewhere else."

When I'm faced with any situation with only two actual outcomes, particularly when one outcome is in my interest and the other is not, the first decision I must make is whether or not I want to get involved in the deciding – "putting myself out there" as it were.  But what I realize now is that if I had any reason to be confident in an outcome being favorable for me, it usually meant I could afford to be patient with the deciding, and refrain from involving myself in the goings-on.  The converse, then, being when the odds are not in my favor, tends to lead to a speedy denial of my good fortune.  This phenomenon, occurring several times this past week in various aspects of my life, has been a source of great frustration for me, since it seems like despite my greatest efforts to the contrary, nothing I do has any meaningful effect on the outcome of someone's decision – even when that decision is in regards to my fate.

My job search, for example, feels like scaling a 20-foot rock cliff with few, if any, handholds.  Looking up at it from the bottom is daunting and demoralizing.  I have no climbing gear.  I have no compatriots calling down to me from the top.  I have no guides giving me advice from the bottom.  The only thing I do have is a map of the suggested route to the top, but like all maps, it doesn't give feedback on whether or not my toils are amounting to real progress.  For that I have nothing but my eyes and my fear of looking back down to tell me where I stand.  Even my search for a mate parallels this metaphor with unpleasant precision.  Yet society demands that I keep trying, that I keep offering up my fate to others, regardless of how well-equipped they are to make such influential decisions.  Wouldn't this company be better with me at the helm of their internal financial controls?  Wouldn't that company?  Wouldn't this girl be happier having the loving support of a man who is sensitive to her feelings and needs?  The answer is almost always yes, and has been for those few who have tried, but until another risks taking me on, I float on a deep pond of indeterminacy, making no headway in any particular direction.

All this, to say nothing of the single worst scenario: being trapped somewhere in the middle of being selected and being rejected.  The ambiguity alone is enough to make one distrust every life truth he clung to before subjecting himself to the whim of another.  Do Human Resources reps not remember what is was like when they began to search for jobs?  The two weeks..... four weeks...... two months...... four months (?!) between first contacting a company and receiving a final decision from them is unnerving and, frankly, inhuman.  Do girls know how dejecting it feels to be calmly explained to that I'm not their "type," only for them to be whisked away by the next guy that comes along, often in my company? (Especially when that guy is the same guy... twice, three times, now four times running...)  I have to remind myself that I am subjected to a very specific (read: small) social environment down here in SKB, one that I will be relieved to have extricated myself from when the time arrives.  But until that happens, I take solace in just having a little apartment space all to myself, where no one else has sway over me.

An aural reader would say that I have a lot of negativity surrounding me right now, and I'm not exactly clear what I've done to invite that upon myself (apart from putting myself out there, which is already having a negative impact on my continued ability to do so).  Despite this, I find myself buoyed by some unseen force, preventing me from slipping into another depression like I was wont to do so often last year.  I credit this shield from disaster to the faithful prayers of my friends and family back home.  When I was struggling with my roller coaster of emotions last year, I discovered after the fact that my Sunday School class had disbanded previously.  Confident I was a frequent standby on the prayer requests list there, I was suddenly shown that I didn't have a SS family to lift me up on a weekly basis anymore, and I believe I felt the effects of that (or more precisely, felt no effects because of that).  Now, however, that has changed, and I want to thank everyone that continues to remember me in prayer – without your love and support, I would be an ineffectual basket case down here.  As it is, I'm at least a somewhat effectual basket case.