FA1L!!!!111

Well, I found out today that I did not get a promotion that I had applied for. The college I work for had created a new management position, and I applied for it. It wasn't my dream job, but it did sound fun and, more importantly, would have been a good opportunity to get some management experience under my belt (instead of what's currently under my belt, which is a fat belly).

I'm angry at myself for not doing a better job, interviewing better, for fucking up whatever I fucked up that caused me to not get the job. Now, I will admit that the person who was hired is a good choice, he'll do a good job, and he's probably better at some aspects of the job than I would have been.

Still, I'm not thrilled at some aspects of the way the interview process was conducted, but I don't really want to get into that here. I'm also feeling like I'm at a disadvantage in some ways because of my current position. Our new CIO, who was instrumental in the creation of the position I didn't get, has also been pushing project management. It's something I've wanted to get into, but because I've been involved in our active directory rollout as well as a couple of other projects, I haven't really been able to go to any of the meetings or lessons about it, which I'm sure didn't help when it came to deciding who got the job. I also haven't made the time to get involved in some of the other projects of interest to our CIO (like our sharepoint deployment). The reasons for this are debateable - I'm too lazy/unmotivated/stupid, I suck too much at my job to get everything I should be getting done done, or I actually have too much work to get done to possibly get it all accomplished.

The question is, where do I go from here? I feel like the chances of me ever moving up where I work are slim - it seems like I haven't made a very good impression on the people who make decisions where I work, and I don't want to become that guy who is always applying for promotions and never gets them. At the same time, I'm reluctant to leave where I work - I'm friends with a lot of the people I work with, I have a lot of "institutional knowledge" about the way things work, who to go to to get things done, who does what, ect. I'm not really sure things would be better anywhere else, and I'm nervous about trying. Besides, I hate (and am not very good at) job interviews.

Sometimes I wonder if I should change direction totally - find a new career. I'm not sure I could make it as a professional eBayer, though. The other idea I've entertained is law school - I've long been interested in legal theory, and seriously considered it when I was between jobs. It seems like it would be fun, and a good way to "start over" a life that I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with, that I'm seeing the light at the tunnel grow smaller and smaller every day at - both in terms of my job as well as my inability to make friends or find love. But the biggest barrier to that is my house - with the market the way it is, I would take a beating if I sold it - with realtor fees and closing costs plus the fact that I'd have to sell it below what I paid for it, I'd probably have to bring a sizable check to closing, which would wipe out my savings. I bought the house because, well, it seemed like the responsible thing to do, and because I was under the mistaken belief that things would get better someday. I'm not really seeing that things are going to change anytime soon, and I'm not quite sure what I need to do to try to make them change.