i got the beach in my toenails

Got a phone interview for the internship up north tomorrow. Did I get it because of my connections, or because of my qualifications and experience? Is there a meaningful difference either way? Just hating the idea that people are interviewing me out of obligation or worse, pity. But really that's not a helpful attitude, and it's not how I'm approaching this, I don't think.

I really really really want this position, but you wouldn't know it from how little I've prepared for the interview. Is that because secretly I don't want it? Generally speaking, my procrastination is largely a function  of fear, if history is anything to go on.

On the one hand I want to win this position on merit, because I'm the best qualified. On the other hand, it just feels mathematically improbable that I will ever be the most qualified person sitting in the figurative waiting room. How can I be? I'm sitting on top of that big bell curve, along with every other mildly ambitious young cultural worker in this big dumb city.

This is the worst pep talk, I'm sorry. I've been allowing myself to speculate on my new Yukon life, instead of my normal routine of feeling guilty for assuming I'll succeed. I think I may have taken that from Mental Traps. Whether I imagine myself winning or losing, either way I am speculating. If there's a choice, why not imagine the future in which I am significantly more happy? Must be some residual Protestant guilt lingering somewhere.

I'm ready to uproot myself. Not really, but it feels necessary, like ripping off a bandage, good in the long run, something you'd best get through quickly, etc. People all around me are doing it, or have done it already. I regret not going away for school. Regrets are dumb, generally, but that's one that seems to linger.

I have the skills and experiences. I have the tenuous personal connections. I have the right attitude. I am eager and young. What could go wrong?

Well, someone could be more qualified. The known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns. Who else is out there? I lost out at TFPO to someone who was bilingual, though the director had only nice things to say to me.

I'm 0-2 in interviews so far, if you're keeping count. I'm not discouraged yet, I don't think, especially not compared to some of my classmates. I'm competing with them for the same jobs, but I don't feel overly worried. Not to take anything away from them, but I think my odds are pretty good. I hate that there is even this element of competition between us all, I wish we could all just commiserate and support each other and be cool. Easier said than done. It'll be easier to be friends once we're all employed.

I'm rambling because I don't want to go to bed.

I'm reading a biography of Mordecai Richler, and it has turned out to be be a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. It helps that Richler led an interesting life, and the author does a good job establishing the context surrounding him, whether it's Jewish Montreal of the 1930's and 40's, or post-war London and Paris. But it's also a nostalgia trip for me to, because it's reconnecting me with one of my favourite authors from when I was a teenager. It's not hard to see why I was attracted to Richler's prose. The young, boozing, cocksure Mordecai Richler was everything I aspired to as 17 year old with literary dreams. Some differences between Richler and me: he worked really hard. He took his writing seriously, and worked at it daily, no matter where he was. he wrote his first novel at 22, and though I haven't read it, it sounds like a book a 22 year old would write.

Here's the problem with writing: in order to write something really good, like say, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, or St. Urbain's Horseman,  first you have to write The Acrobats. It doesn't work any other way. You have to write something not very good, something raw and unpolished and you need a youthful arrogance not to be able to see it. I'm cribbing this from Merlin Mann now, but if you want to be good at something, first you have to be bad at it, and that is a hard thing to get over.

But anyway, Richler uprooted himself and skipped across the ocean to hang-out in post-war Europe and have ridiculous amounts of sex. Why can't I do the same? Except in the other direction, and probably with less sex?