Application not successful

I applied for a job a few weeks ago, to run the British Humanist Association's network of funeral, wedding and baby naming celebrants.  They gave me a telephone interview last week, but I didn't get it.  It's the kind of job I'd love to have done and would have solved at one stroke the problem of what I do next and I was very disappointed.  It doesn't matter how old you get, it doesn't dull the pain of rejection.

I know I've no right to complain, some people have to deal with this everyday.  I take my hat off to them, I don't know how they do it.  It's why I've always had the greatest respect for professional actors.  Not the lucky few who manage to get regular work, but the dedicated majority who hang in there doing a few weeks here and there, whilst filling shelves or working in a bar to keep some money coming in.  The best of them don't do this out of any real desire to be famous, although most of them wouldn't of course say "no" to this.  They do it because acting is what they do and the occasional high of being in a tight ensemble working to the common goal of moving an audience in some way is enough.  I couldn't do that.  I tried, briefly in the early nineties and I found it crushing.  Although I have to admit that playing in the Sondheim musical "Sweeney Todd" at Edinburgh in 1991 was one of the most intense and satisfying experiences I've ever had.

So, what next?  A question I've been asking myself most of my adult life.  I guess I'll just have to keep throwing myself at that lighted candle, because when I no longer feel like doing this, it will be time to curl up and die.