Prayers please

One thing I had forgotten about unemployment is the emotional whiplash. Hope gets you up, then your hopes are dashed (or wither away). Then new hope appears. It’s exhausting.

When I took my last job at Adobe, I turned down an offer from Google. Having lost my job, I turned back to Google, and was surprised to hear that if they have made a job offer to you in the past year, it can simply be reinstated! They can do this because unlike normal companies which hire you for a specific position, Google hires you for your skills and then they figure out where to place you.

Except it’s been more than a year for me — closer to two — so the recruiter couldn’t just wave me in. Instead, they asked me to interview with just two people. This is significantly less then the usual phone interview plus six people! The recruiter said he’d try to line it up for this past week, but like many tech companies around here, Google is about to shut down for the holidays, which means that people start leaving early to take extra time off. I went a week without hearing anything, which was depressing. Finally I resigned to the fact that nothing was going to happen until January, so I may as well try to relax and enjoy the time off. This was last night.

This morning, I found that they did manage to scare up two people to interview me — this Monday! Whiplash! By Christmas, I should be elated or defeated. The nervous excitement, the mix of hope and fear, makes my eyes tear up unexpectedly. I am hopeful that with just two people, I’ll be a shoo-in. And I am fearful that with just two people, if I mess up with even one of them, it’ll kill it.

So if you pray (and even if you usually don’t), I would really appreciate your prayers for me at this time. I want God to open or shut this door, and for me to be at peace if… aah, what a crock! I just want this job!