I work in a new job now as well as in a new line of business. As a consultant every new project means a whole new application process complete with sending in your profile or CV and having interviews. The difference is that the company (meaning your superior unless you are a senior yourself) match you to customer requirements. This means that you don't always get to choose which project you join or where your new location is.
This is all still a bit new to me, since I've always worked for a software house in a stable office. I was just introduced for a testing project in a city three and a half hours from here. Now my focus is software engineering and I was hoping to gather more experience in that field - as well as score a project somewhere nearby to start with. I was quite disappointed. More so, the subject here is test management, so this means little to no technical work at all. Other new colleagues having exciting programming work while I was to do management didn't make it any better either. It felt as though the boss wasn't able to place me anywhere better and was grasping at straws, grabbing the first easy opportunity that had presented itself. No encouragement from colleagues or even from my wife could lift the feeling of helplessness that I was to waste an entire year doing something that I wouldn't enjoy and that didn't enrich my skill profile one bit. So afterwards it would be just as difficult to get placed in an interesting project as it was now. In fact, I was so disappointed that I planned to fail the interview on purpose and even considered leaving the company (which is all still fairly simple since I'm in my probation period).
In the end, despite trying to hint that I didn't have that much experience in testing the customer still accepted my placement. The boss even congratulated me on my superb performance in the interview. You could say I failed at failing.
However, after a lot of thought I have come to realise that maybe there is an important lesson in this for me:
In my previous job they expected me to do my work, more or less. From a consultant people expect more: they expect professionalism. Any amateur can do well and deliver work that they enjoy. Any amateur does what they like. It takes a professional to take the good with the less so and make the best of both. A professional delivers to the best of their abilities regardless of personal feelings. An actor can't always play the lead, a painter cannot always render beautiful people, a soldier isn't always based where it's warm and sunny. But being professional they will still work hard to ensure success. I took this job because I wanted to learn and be more professional. So I guess it is time to step up to the task.