Sometimes, I wish I could turn back time. I mean, I’m not after anything major. Maybe just the ability to rewind the last three minutes or so. That way, whenever I do something incredibly cringeworthy (which, let’s be honest, is all the time) I could just go back and undo it all. Live a cringe-free life.
Take this morning, for example. I had a job interview, the first of what will hopefully be many, and to say it didn’t exactly go well would be an understatement. The thing was a blooming disaster. And why? Well, because when I get nervous I have a tendency to:
- Latch on to random things in conversation; and
- Ramble.
Those bad habits are a deadly combination. So, when I walked into the ridiculously nice offices to interview, the first thing I blurted out was a comment about cutting edge commercial office design. Melbourne has some of the most beautiful office designs these days. On its own, that may not have so bad. It might have looked like I have an eye for design, art, and all that good stuff. But unfortunately for everyone involved, it didn’t end there. What followed was a solid 10-minutes of nearly incoherent talk that was more or less solely focused around Melbourne office fitouts. It went from being an intelligent commentary to an anxious stream of consciousness extremely quickly. Whatever his initial impressions may have been, needless to say by the end of that, the interviewer was thoroughly confused. It would have made a lot of sense if I was interviewing for an office design job. I was not.
Here’s the thing, though. I knew I was talking nonsense. I could feel it, but that didn’t mean I could stop it. Almost like an anxiety-induced out of body experience, if you know what I mean. All of which leads me to believe that the perfect solution would involve a superpower that allowed me to do it over again and not be such gushing fool.