I had an interview yesterday.

It did not go well.

I have tried to understand why it did not go well.

The understanding I have arrived at is this: I became overwhelmed by the questions, or became frustrated by my own ability to maintain the pace of interaction. I should have slowed my responses, taken time to make sure I understood the question, made sure I was speaking to the question. I didn’t do that and that is my fault.

It also suggests I would not be successful in positions requiring public interaction. My prior job involved customer service and at times the customers were quite aggressive. Despite this, I performed well; I believe I would encounter difficulties in a similar situation today. This, I think, is one of the reasons I appreciate text. I can spend time on the construction of a letter, or an email, I can ensure that it is more or less correct and then, once I have polished it to the best of my ability, off it goes.

The March / April crisis was triggered when one of my correspondents sought to initiate a much faster query-response cycle and I had great trouble keeping up with what I suppose would be a “normal” response rate. When this happened, I realized what I was doing; I also came to question my own ability to further manage the project I was trying to develop.

I run the same risk with this blog project. One of the issues I keep turning over in the back of my head is “can I do it?” I do not have the answer to that question. What I hope will happen is that the attempt will help achieve the outcome. I know that my capacity to write has increased significantly since a year ago. My thought is that the blog, and related activity, will function as a form of rehabilitation, that I will be able to bootstrap my way back to something close to normalcy. And if I cannot achieve that goal I may still be able to generate some additional income to help keep the wolf from the door. Fingers crossed.

There was another issue that arose in the meeting of yesterday and it has to do with a matter of trust. I spent a number of years in HR and recruiting and one more or less expects a candidate to have burnished his record, to present himself in the best light. A certain amount of concealment and misdirection, perhaps this should be called “marketing,” comes into play. All of that is expected; it was my role as the recruiter to test the validity of various truth claims. Basic epistemology once again.

But the situation in yesterday’s interview was very different. It was not a job interview so the performance expectations were not the same. And the person who altered the truth, who sought to mislead, was the person holding the interview, not the interviewee.

I had the sense something was wrong at the time. It was when I returned home that I found confirmation. And an hour ago, in an undated note in my files, I found further confirmation. The problem I now face is that if I believe what I was told yesterday then I have to accept that a person I know well is mendacious. But I trust this other person; I do not believe them to have misled me in any way. And I am angered that the leader of yesterday’s interview would try and concoct a story that serves to cast doubt on another. It is even more disturbing when the person casting such aspersions is a new contact, someone I have never encountered before. In our first meeting, he lies.

I don’t think I am going back.