I hope this is coherent. I at least waited till my officemate left to burst into tears.

Let me just say, the last time this happened to me, I ended up in the hospital for a week and a half. I hope I am stronger this time and won't go that far off the deep end, but right now I'm not promising anything.

So. I got tag-teamed by my immediate supervisor and the editor-in-chief. Big guy did most of the talking. He told me as soon as I sat down that they weren't going to consider me for the position. He then mentioned ONE positive thing before launching into about 14 reasons why I suck.

I found much of it very unfair. He brought up byline counts. At my 6th month review last year, I was told to hit a target of 3 to 4 stories a week. I have done that consistently. But, I got compared to the other 2 people (one being my officemate) who work in the hinterland offices: In a 2-month period (in which I had a fair bit of time off), both of them had much bigger numbers than I did. One of them has lived here 20 years. One of them has lived here 7. I have lived here 16 months. The first time I ever set foot in this part of the state was for the job interview. How can I be expected to have as many connections in my community as they do?

The other thing he brought up was "initiative." They want me to think of more of my own story ideas. I have worked on that as well. I run ideas past my editor -- who is 50 years old, grew up here, and has worked for the paper 26 years -- and he says, "Oh yeah, we did that a couple years ago." How am I supposed to have the knowledge base to know that?

My immediate boss, at least, tried to bring up some more positives to ease things, but I still feel like a complete loser.

From there, I went to my pdoc appointment. 2nd time seeing this guy after canning the old one. Love him already, so that is very nice. Totally night and day from the loser I canned. At my first appt. a couple months ago, he ordered some labs. In reviewing them today, my fasting blood sugar was out of sight. This means buh-bye, Seroquel. It is one of the only two mood stabilizers that have ever done jack for me....and the other one nearly caused my death from bone marrow failure. So I am kind of SOL med-wise, right at a time where I've been increasingly hypomanic.

Not a good day, guys. And now the second-guessing myself is rampant, and that's never a good thing.