.

I unexpectedly dissolved into tears of I-don’t-know-what while on the phone with Joe on Sunday afternoon. Michael’s attack, which I know he did not intend as cruel, upset me, because it played on my fear of being completely misunderstood, and thus thought naïve or ridiculous or whatever.

Thank God for people who understand me.

Joe reminded me that there are going to be weeks like this, where I’m going to wallow. And when I told him about all of Michael’s suggestions, he agreed that they were a little over the top. And that, regardless, I shouldn’t do anything that feels blatantly unnatural.

Essentially, Joe, who knows me better than almost anyone, believes that in order for this job hunting thing to work for me, I have to be myself. That all the rules and suggestions and nouveau ways of job hunting are not going to work if I’m being inauthentic. And while it’s true that the definition of insanity is going the same thing over and over and expecting different results it would be equally insane to try to morph into what I think someone else wants me to be.

I’ve tried it with boys. It doesn’t work with them and it’s not going to work with jobs.

And this is why Joe is the comforting, Morgan Freeman voiceover in my life.

Later, I was talking to Brent, about important subjects such New Jersey politics, bureaucracy, the last 30 minutes of the movie The Net (I love that movie. Vintage Sandra Bullock), I told him about my conversation from Saturday:

“My friend Michael has the delusional idea that I am Dagny Taggart style ambitious, where in reality, I am unconfrontational and not aggressive”

“Yes. Not enough moxie IMO”

“Yes. Actually that’s EXACTLY it.”

And besides Brent and I, I think Joe is the only other person on the planet who will get why there are points involved for the use of moxie.