How much of it was me, and how much of it was her? I don't know and the reality of it is that no matter how much I try to be objective, I'm living in my head, so my world is already shaded. I remember once in high school, an English teacher told my class that people tend to see themselves and their viewpoint in a more positive light than that of their opponent's when it comes to an argument. All of this being said, when I detach myself from the situation I can honestly say that she was a terrible manager; discouraging, negative, picky, impatient and critical of me with impossibly high expectations, she had no understanding that people need to know what they do well, along with the things they don't do so well. To focus solely on the mistakes made and the things that could be better is no way to inspire someone to do better or play to their strengths. A month and a half is not a long enough time to allow someone to do well, learn and get better before getting hard on them either.

These are the things I can be objective about. Nevertheless, I have found myself rootless and shaken, my confidence all but gone. There have been times in my life where I say I don't know what I'm doing, but right now, I feel like that's the truth. I was trained and loved but one thing when I was in college. That one thing was writing, journalism, but it's extremely daunting to me now in "the real world" to know that fighting for a j-job takes a willingness to constantly self-promote, to expend energy every second of every day thinking of what stories exist, how to pitch them......And at the end of the day journalism jobs are highly unstable and pay little to nothing, rarely a decent income with benefits.

I feel tortured; the one thing I love is the one thing that won't support me financially, but I cringe when I think of spending years chained to a 9-5:30 desk, performing a job by wrote, with little or no room for creativity or for anything else that matters.

I try reminding myself that just because I have a tendency to place things at opposite poles does not mean they exist there. Just because a job is a desk job doesn't mean it won't allow for fulfillment or creativity. Just because journalism doesn't pay now, doesn't mean it might not lead down a road towards a content position that does pay. I tend to live in opposites and must remind myself that life consists of multiple shades of gray, rarely black and white.

And why lose ALL confidence in myself? I'm personable, hard working and quick learning. Although I didn't know Excel or Word proficiently while I was there, I did learn details about the programs, things I didn't know before starting the position. It is possible to learn these programs,  and once learned, no one, not even a negative manager can take those skills away.

Daniel Pink writes in A Whole New Mind that story telling is one of those high-touch, high-concept skills that can't be easily replicated in Asian markets, where systematized, logical work can be done via computer, for much less money. Maybe journalism jobs are disappearing and maybe it's no longer a viable career option for me; but if what Pink says is true, there must be room for some solace in his words. After all, I'm a story teller, and it's true that my voice cannot be easily, or cheaply reproduced by someone else. 

So, right now, I'm trying to self analyze and figure out how I can learn from this failure. The most dangerous thing I could do would be to latch on to this experience the next time I'm working a new job and facing a critique. I don't want to create a self-fulfilling prophecy like "if I get critiqued, I'll be worried about my job, which will make me worry more, which will harm the quality of my work, which will inevitably lead to someone firing me because my work's gotten worse." This is the mantra I need to stay away from.  I need to realize that events, although linked, do happen in finite, separate times, and are unique to themselves. They may be linked by a thread, but experiences are not like dominoes. Just because one thing falls through doesn't mean that it pushes everything ahead of it to fall through as well.