After waffling around most of the day doing nothing but being nervous and reading slashdot, just a few short minutes ago, Bitscape finally worked up the resolve to call the aforementioned recruiter on voice, before the end of the business day.

I have a strong tendancy to be such a total flake when it comes to initiating phone conversations with complete strangers, especially there are stakes involved. My mind becomes so full of doubts and wonders. Whether the people on the other end might be doctors, potential employers, or prostitutes, my mind pre-emptively freaks out at everything that might possibly go wrong.

"What if I say something stupid? What if it turns out to be a really rotten operation that I don't want to be involved in? If so, how can I politely bow out without hurting anybody's feelings? What if I don't have the skills they're looking for? What if I'm not up to the task? What if they ask about the circumstances under which I was FIRED from my last tech job? What do I say? (I think I did the best I could have under the circumstances, but still.... it's awkward.) Maybe I don't want to do this at all. Maybe I can just stay at my deli job for a while longer; and worry about finding other opportunities later. It's not that bad. Best just enjoy my day off. Best not call at all." Reload Slashdot.

But then I get to thinking that I really do want to seek to better myself, and my station in life. Even if money weren't an issue (which it is), I remember back to what I was thinking back in August, when I was considering eventually quitting the job I had then. About BROADENING my life experiences. And now is my chance.

Still.... nervousness. Repeat last two paragraphs through a few hundred iterations.

Finally, as the infamous time of 5 o'clock began to draw nearer, I realized that I was going to have to make a firm decision, one way or another. Contiuning to stall would NOT be an option. Not calling would amount to an implicit decision to turn down this opportunity. Not only that, but I would probably eliminate myself from the pool of potential candidates for consideration of future opportunities by this particular entity, who had been so kind as to consider my resume worthy of reply.

The clincher: If I didn't do something, I would have little hope of truly enjoying the rest of the evening tonight, thinking that "maybe" tomorrow, I could take action (though it would be even harder). No form of entertainment would be capable of completely adbicating my mind of this anxiety.

So, with nervous hands on the phone, I hesitated, ran my finger over the button, pulled back, hesitated again (about 3 times), and finally pressed "call".

After a couple rings, the recruiter who had emailed me answered.

I gave my name, and said I was calling about the web position discussed in email.

"Oh yes. The requirements for that position have changed a bit since then." She proceeded to read me the new version, which apparently involves migrating a bunch of messy existing Java/Oracle code on Windows to a perl/Mysql system on Linux/Apache. Hmmmmmmmm.....

I still have most of the required skills, and she thought that based on the info on my resume, I would be a good fit. I admitted that I'm not terribly experienced in java, but I could probably manage. (Reply: "Yeah, I think so too. I wouldn't worry to much about that." Suggesting to me that this one might be a bit more clueful than some PHPs automatically assume that because one does not already have a thorough knowledge of the specific syntactic symmantics $specific_language, that one is immediately disqualified for a given task.)

The only tricky point: She said the client wanted live web samples of previous work developing e-commerce technologies. I explained that pretty much all my professional work at $last_company (not including a certain hosting company) was either done on interfaces for web appliances (which aren't directly accessible on any given website), or on internal pages only available to insiders.

She said she'd negotiate this with their sales people, who have already left for today, and get back to me tomorrow morning. Oh goodie.

Well, I feel good, even if this particular thing doesn't pan out. Reasons?

1) I haven't squandered any potential opportunities. For my part, I've done the best I can. No more can be asked.

2) Even if I don't get this one, I now have a contact with some degree of clue, who, despite lack of direct evidence of my abilities, apparently has some degree of confidence in my work. Maybe this could lead to potential future opportunitiese.

3) Something has happened. I feel the momentum on my side. Yay!

On related note, I have this (perhaps erroneous) theory that it might be cool to be a freelancer, doing lots of short term projects, jumping from one organization to another, as a way of life. It could keep things interesting to always be moving on to another project. Avoid the monotony of going to do the same thing every day for years.

OTOH, there's me and my... inhibitions with contacting new people. And in the current economic climate, it might not be the best time for a newbie like me to jump head first. But anyway.... Those are just random thoughts.

Oh yes. This also reaffirms my theory that it would be a Good Thing for my career if I were to really learn Java. So maybe I will.

But right now, I'm gonna go chill. Peace.