After Saying No

I decided against taking the part-time job. The one that seemed, at least for now, wrong. The one that would have precluded really examining my options.
So now I have time to go on the interviews for the jobs that do not actually exist. Which is weird. Is this an existential riddle or a job hunt?
Accepting the would-be, part-time, underpaid gig felt like selling myself short too soon. That’s one of the things about looking for work in the Post-W Depression: finding the wrong offers along the way. I am constantly measuring my levels of desperation against bad options. Sounds like dating, doesn’t it?
After saying no, I was talking about it with my unemployed neighbor—and by that I meant the unemployed neighbor to my left, not the unemployed neighbor to my right. Sometimes I wonder if anybody in this building has a job any longer. Anyway, when I mentioned the phrase “part-time job I did not take,” my neighbor’s eyes lit up. She had been there. She had recently said no to something, too. Her no went to a much better-paying, full-time assignment, but she knew it was the wrong thing for her.
I envy her certainty. Usually I am incredibly decisive, but now I constantly find myself questioning what the hell to do next. Part of being jobless is weighing how much time to invest in each would-be employer. At exactly this moment, should I be spending my time emailing someone in Fort Lauderdale to convince her that I have Web experience (and that I want to give up Manhattan for the Sunshine State, which I don’t), or should I be sending my clips to a weekly newspaper that is already tossing employees overboard? Or should I be out walking in Riverside Park, since I think fat people do not get hired?
For now, I will keep letting these questions roll around in my mind. Overall, though, I think I owe it to myself to take a month or six weeks (according to my stack of bills, there’s a difference between those two options) and really look for something right. Even in this awful economy. But since I read the newspapers (at least until I stop the subscriptions), I know that there’s not much chance of me actually finding a job. At least in the next month or six weeks. I am out to prove myself wrong. Or at least get out of the existential riddle.