in our current economic situation, if i were to say i got turned down for a job, no one would be the least bit surprised, you could pretty much expect it to happen. knowing though that there were indeed positions to be filled, and someone is going to be planted in those empty seats… well, dependent upon how qualified you feel for the job, you start to mull over what you think your chances look like, and than can cause you to get your hopes up, or doubt that you even have a shot at all.

my hopes certainly escalated while i was under review, but i didn’t really feel at odds with being turned down for the position so much. what did get inside my head was the reasoning given as to why i was being rejected. my style was commented on, not really giving a name or label to it, but insinuating that i in fact have a definitive style, and that it doesn’t mesh well with them.

as i take such a comment in and chew on it for a while, i really sit back and browse through my work and wonder, “what the hell is my style?”. i don’t feel like i’ve ever become grounded to one style in particular and hence lost the ability to adapt, but now i wonder could there be some truth to it…

if i take the comment at face value and believe it to mean nothing more or less than what was stated; assuming that there’s no sugar coated professionalism or anything i’m unaware of between the lines, it suggests that i could take two completely different pieces of my work, mix it in with work from other people, and expect someone who has never seen anything laid out in front of them before and match the two pieces of mine up with not much more than a glance.

on one end, that’s a fairly nice possiblity, if it’s true that i have a look of my own that’s something very hard to complain about, as it’s one of the things nearly everyone in my line of work strives for. on the other end however, i have no fondness of the suggestion that if i had need to emulate something in order to get a desired result i would be incompetent to do so.

the last thing i would ever want is to fall into a niche, but i wonder if now isn’t a time to try and run in different directions to try and counter such a possibility, or if i should be trying to identify any recurring continuity in my work and center on developing with what has got me this far.

then again, maybe what i should be looking at how much sway i’ve been giving to one opinion, when in all honesty the comment could have been a nice way of letting me down.

disappointment has to fit in somewhere i guess, and today i found myself feeling a measure of it; here’s to hoping the dosage doesn’t increase~

l j holbrook