24 Hours Til Trainwreck Time

I was one of those unbearably annoying people in college who used to declare, both before and after every single exam, "I'm going to fail." And then I would get an A. Or, rarely, a B. Still, each and every time I would vociferously proclaim to all and sundry that this time was different. This time, I'd say, there was proof. I knew I'd gotten number 7 wrong, for example, or I hadn't had a chance to pick up the book once before heading in to take the test. This time, I was truly, for real, absolutely going to fail.

I never failed.

I need to tell you all this because there is a vague possibility that, despite the fact that this is the real world and not college, I am about to cry wolf once again. Dear god, I hope I am about to cry wolf once again. Because otherwise, I'm screwed.

Tomorrow, at about the time I began writing this, I'm scheduled to meet with my boss at the university. He called the meeting. Through his secretary. Which, for the record, is unprecedented; we always just email one another. And he did so just a week after he killed one of my major projects, and just two weeks after he responded to my query of "what else do you want me to be working on right now?" with "just get what you're working on finished."

Can you see maybe, just maybe, why I'm seeing pink right now? As in slip?

The timing makes perfect sense. I started on the job on April 1, which might have been my first mistake. We agreed to revisit the situation in six months to decide if this was working for both of us; in fact, my employment contract only runs through October 1.

It has not been a good six months. There has been much else on my plate (as in outside work, like ParentsConnect), and the job has reamined ill-defined, despite my pleas for more direction.

But I've also fucked up. I haven't been able to get stuff produced, finished, out the door. I have plenty of excuses, especially considering that none of this is the stuff I'm good at and I've never done any of it before and I have literally zero support from the office and so have to figure it all out by myself. But that's not an overall excuse, if you know what I mean.

If I were my boss, I'd fire me, too.

What will this mean? No health benefits. No life insurance. No security. A loss of two-thirds of my income. Tears. Panic. Anxiety. Depression.

I can almost hear my girlfriends screaming at me: Stop horriblizing! But I can't. The truth is, I know intellectually that we'll survive. I don't know how, exactly. But we will. I also know we'll take a big hit, at least at first. And that it will hurt. A lot. And that, for a while at least, I'm going to wallow in that hurt.

Emotionally, however, all I can think about is this: I'm going to fail. I'm sure of it. This time is different. This time it's for sure.