Frustration Friday: Behold the Power of Emo
I meet people who are suffering in the job search. They're worried. They're tired. They're angsty. In short, there are many people who get outright Emo over their job search and career issues.
(For those of you unfamiliar with the term Emo, which knowing the gloriously geeky demographics of this blog is unlikely, it can be roughly summarizes as a kind of angst-ridden, self-pitying attitude).
Here's what I want to ask the Emo Careerists: what the hell is being angsty doing for your career issues?
Is it helping you on the job search?
Is it helping you network?
Is it helping you in interviews?
The answer of course is almost certainly no, unless you interviews are with people who are very pathological and probably not worth working for. Emo does nothing more than waste energy and annoy people. A lot.
Here's what Emo is – it's a cry for pity (often not even alloyed with a cry for help). That's it. It's a cry for attention, a cry to be thought of as a sad victim, and of course a cry for validation of one's own sorrow.
Such outcries are just plain annoying because they're manipulative, they're posturing, and they're performances. It's not a try cry for help – and honest cry- it's a passive-aggressive call not so much for help, but for validation of one's own problems and for attention.
Emo isn't about solutions.
So next time you're depressed over your job prospects, if you suspect you're getting Emo, then it's time for some serious self-evaluation. If you find you are indeed pulling out the Angst Attack on people, then you're sabotaging your life – and you have enough problems as it is.