A Prayer

I just finished a shift at Big Green, and it went well. I'm sautéeing some onions and ham. They will join two eggs inside a warm tortilla. A slick, black iron skillet is my tool for warming tortillas. In two and a half hours, I will enter a job interview. For a real job. I'm optimistic, and I'm fairly confident in interpersonal situations, but I am a bit nervous. I've been submitting resumés and shmoozing people for a year, and this is the first interview (for a non-awful job) that I've gotten. Do I suck, or does the economy suck?

I'm going to put on a suit and go to RTP with my paperwork all in order. I'm second-guessing myself like crazy. What will they find that is inadequate or undesirable? How many people are they interviewing? Will the security guards haul me out because I break down into abject begging and offering of sexual favors if they'd just please hire me and get me the fuck out of retail?

Perhaps it's just the effects of 11 months of rotten jobs. That sort of shit will suck your self esteem out like the Dementors in Harry Potter. It's tough to be excited about yourself when an hour of your time is worth so little money, and you are so replaceable.

Please, God, make the interviewers look favorably on me, and make my paperwork free of omissions and ugly things. Deliver me from the misery of crap jobs so I can afford take my wife out to dinner some time. So I'm not a crabby, negative stick-in-the-mud all the time. So I'm not spending so much of my time trying to cheer myself up. So I can get my life on track and do things like travel and have kids. Please, Almighty God, who has already given me more good things in life than I deserve, please give me this as well. Amen.