Thursday, February 2, 2012

Faking It


I'm supposed to call a big important lawyer dude tomorrow. I'm, predictably, freaking out about this.



I was referred to him by a jewelry salesperson/buyer at a high end department store that my mom has made friends with (this is completely unsurprising if you know my mother).

My mom and I stopped in to said fancy department store for lunch and I met this lovely saleswoman before we ate. I tried on a ring that was absurdly expensive and they both made vague comments about "Oh you'll have it soon enough!" Sure. Yeah. Uh huh. My student loan debts are apparently going to be magically paid off and I'll have money for compressed carbon rather than, ya know, a dwelling of my own. Yep.

Anyway, the very nice sales lady asks me about my job search, I tell her vaguely about the half ass mess that it is. And that's being generous. She says she has a guy that shops with her and I should absolutely give him a call and just massage how I know her and all that. I say sure sure and take his info from her. Just a name and a phone number. She also tells me that I'm very pretty and that good things will happen for me (she's foreign, imagine foreign accent here. Also why she gets away with saying such adorable untrue and speculative things), which is when my mother is prompted to say that things come much more easily to my brother. At which point for me there was a record scratch noise in my head.

I fully intended to do exactly nothing with the information that she'd given me. It was nice and all, but what the hell am I supposed to say? "Hi, I know I have no practical training and don't really want to be a lawyer but being broke is kinda sucking/student loans are past due so feel like helping me out, big fancy self starter of your own law firm guy who is friends with the jewelry saleswoman?" Does that work? Ever?

But just taking the information and doing nothing isn't gonna work. Apparently my mom emailed the jewelry lady "nice to see you blah blah blah" and jewelry lady wrote back saying she happened to run into fancy lawyer dude and that I should definitely give him a call soon. Dammit. (It occurs to me that my mother could have completely made that second part up. It also occurs to me that my mother isn't that...ya know...(Yes, I'm aware I'm going to hell. What of it?))

So I am stuck having to call big fancy lawyer guy tomorrow. I am not looking forward to this. First of all: I absolutely loathe talking on the phone. I do everything in my will power to avoid it. If my entire life could be done over text, chat, and email, I'd be happy with that. That I can't email in to-go orders is a point of great contention with me. In fact, I was recently confronted with a problem where the first course of action was not to send an email but to call and that kind of screwed everything up and I couldn't believe people didn't just send email in the first place because who the hell calls anyone anymore? (Old people, that's who.)

Second of all: in case you haven't been following along closely, I'll say this in very plane terms: I suffer from serious insecurity issues about pretty much everything about me. As my mother started to point out but didn't go far enough on: things don't just come more easily to my brother, they ARE easier. Everything is freaking effortless. It's one of my greatest frustrations with him. And why his disdain of those (me) for whom things don't just happen is... Whatever, this isn't about him. The idea of selling myself when there isn't, to my mind, anything to sell? Ugh. Just ugggghhh. I have to call lawyer dude and say exactly what that would entice him to do anything with me? I mean, in all honesty, I'd work for peanuts just to learn something at this point. My brain and my life stagnating the way they are. Still...how do I convey my exceptional qualities without all the self loathing creeping in?

(Digression alert: I hate putting that above paragraph here. I dislike blogging about this, actually. But it dawned on me that currently there's no great confidante. In addition to the usual struggles there is now the problem of how disappointing friendships can be. I'm not perfect and I absolutely own my own faults in them, but it is disappointing. The one who used to be the best friend...not enough space for what happened there. The current long distance best friend keeps texting me, "Omg! Where are you!? What's going on?" and then when I am around to talk is MIA. And I know I have a reputation as an ice queen but I keep doing little things for people, that I hope are nice and appreciated, with no reciprocity. Which to be clear is not why I do it, but a return on investment of just hearing me out would be nice. The hockey watching best friend is great but he's definitely one of those "please stop crying" kind of guys. If I came to him with all this heavy emotional stuff, I'm sure he'd freak a bit. There just seems to be a lack of people willing to listen to my bullshit complaints and offer solid life advice at the moment. Even more loathe to go into THAT here, but while we're being honest, figured I might as well. Anyway. Moving on.)

I'm left with the old mantra, "Fake it 'til you make it" running through my head. That's what I'm going to have to do.

Because really, all I've been wanting, completely unrealistically, is someone to walk up and just hand me a job and say, "Here. You do this. You'll be good at it. It'll work." This is about as close as it is going to get, isn't it? The nice, fancy jewelry lady hands me the number of a partner at a firm and says call him and he is on alert to expect my call. Doesn't get much better than that, does it?

I just have to pretend that I'm the greatest, most intelligent lawyer that ever walked the face of the earth, right up there with Holmes, until it is true. (Leaving out the fact that I just googled to make sure I spelled Holmes name right because it's been that long since I've done law related stuff. How the hell else would it be spelled, idiot?)

I have to get over my phone phobia and my utter lack of self confidence and just DO. Right? The rest will fall into place? Is that how it works? I guess? Does anyone know? Ugggghh.

If only hiding under the covers for all of time was a valid option...

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