And so it begins... again.

The MLA job search list doesn't come out for almost another month, and already Brownie has found a position for NEXT August to apply for.  Meaning that any possible sense of "yes, we could actually settle in and stay in this city" is already obliterated.  I figure this is probably not all bad, in that it's good to remember that we very well could be moving again in 50-ish weeks, but it's also like &^%%%*OKIGDKF_)%^&FUCKING%T^Y&DAMMIT NOT AGAIN. 

And so we begin another year of Brownie sending applications off to the void of department application committees, whence they will never be heard from again.  Ever.  A few years ago, I was pointed by a good friend in the direction of a blog whose author was going through a rhet/comp job search and posting the rejection letters with commentary.  The blog was awesome (and even more amusing to me was that the blogwriter had decided not to apply for the opening at the school I was doing my Ph.D. work at because the Humanities Center website was WAYYYY to hippydippy to bother with).  Meanwhile, last year, I don't think Brownie got enough rejections from schools that he could have done a blog mocking them - he wouldn't have had more than about 15 entries despite the 70-odd applications he sent out.

So, if you somehow trip over this blog and you're a member of an academic search committee:  PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF CEILING CAT SEND OUT REJECTION LETTERS IN A TIMELY MANNER.  Many, many lives are depending on the knowledge contained in those letters.  It's much nicer to know for sure that one has been rejected than to sit around and wonder.

The above-yelled advice goes for anyone else who is in the position to reject someone from a job:  please just send out a rejection letter/email/note/whatever.  In the 20-ish applications I've submitted for jobs, I've gotten exactly one rejection.  Everything else (so far, anyway) has been abject silence, which makes me feel less worthy of respect than even a rejection would.

My personal job search boils down to a giant quandary (which I'm about to explain poorly - my apologies).  As of now, I'm unemployed.  I started a beer blog (which I'm not linking to from here because there's a fairly limited number of people that need to know who the author of *this* blog is, given the amount of whining I do here).  I'm hoping that I'll eventually be able to use that to start freelancing the occasional beer article.  In the meantime, I would like an office-y sort of job with a vaguely respectable paycheck.  However, I have no idea how long it will take me to find one.  So I run into a problem:  there's a chance we could be moving halfway across the bleeding country again next year if Brownie gets a job somewhere.  Which would mean I would have to quit any job I were to get.*  So I'm not sure how long I want to spend trying to get a "real" job before I decide to put that on hold pending it looks like we will be moving.  Meanwhile, I applied to Borders, but I've heard nothing yet even from them.  I suppose Starbucks is next.  Or a liquor store. 

My dissertation is still a douchebag, and my relationship with it is still strained.

The good thing:  having nothing else to do, I've been plowing away at novel attempt number 2.  There hasn't been tons of writing, but there's been a ton of worldbuilding and storyboarding and at least 2 chapters worth of writing.  I'm playing around with point of view stuff right now and having a blast with it.  I think the fact that I can at least spend my nearly limitless amounts of free time working on writing has been what's kept me from going nuts during this umemployment phase of life.  I feel like I'm doing something productive, even if it ends up being only to amuse myself.  I will publish a novel SOMEDAY.  It may not be this one (it sure as hell won't be the last one - that was a disaster!), but it will happen.  Dammit. :D

Good thing #2:  I'm wearing BPAL Sundew today and it smells GORGEOUS.

* Brownie says that if I were to get a kick ass job and love it, that we'd stay no matter what happens on the academic search for him.  I think it's sweet of him, but a long shot - I really haven't the foggiest fucking idea what to do with myself, job-wise, so I think it's unlikely that we'd be staying because of me.  Not impossible, but definitely unlikely.

I promise I'm not dead or anything

I've been out in the great Midwest the past couple of weeks, marrying off a friend (whose hellish wedding probably deserves a post), spending a weekend in Tulsa, hanging out with my brother and so on.  It's been a strange combination of hellaciously busy and completely bored while waiting for bridefriend to bother getting back to me, etc.

Anyway, the actual news-not-news is that the university we've been waiting on to find out if Brownie has a job with them this upcoming year has told him they'll get back to him sometime next week.  This means two things:  1) after next week, we'll be able to make firm plans on where/when/how we'll move (FINALLY) and 2) next week, until they get back to Brownie, is going to be filled with him being anxious, not sleeping and so on.  I'm going to try and suggest he spend most of it cooking or something like that, because the anxiety can be really difficult to cope with (for both of us, honestly - his anxiety has a tendency to fill whatever space he's in) and I'm trying to come up with ways for him to be busy.

As for my preferences, to the degree I'm allowing myself to have any, I'm not sure.  On one hand, it'd be awesome if Brownie gets the job because that means we'll have at least one guaranteed income next year *phew*.  OTOH, the job is in a small PA town, meaning that it'll be really difficult for me to find a worthwhile job.  I don't relish the thought of sitting around endlessly jobhunting next year.  Brownie has told me that I can just stay home and write next year if I'd like, and I do relish the thought, but I need to have some sort of job that will allow me to get the hell out of the house sometimes or I'll go batshit insane -- a feeling compounded by the fact that if we end up in said small PA town, I wouldn't know anyone at all besides my husband.

Meanwhile, if we come to the Midwest (back home for me), it'd be much easier for me to find a job, and we've got a huge social network out here, and there's generally more to do.  I'd be much happier on a day-to-day basis.  However, if we move out here, Brownie won't be teaching anything in any kind of academic capacity unless something really strange happens and he manages not only to get into the adjunct pool at any of the local places, but also manages to get a course or three to teach. 

The problem is that being in academics, a year off can be nightmarish to explain on the job market.  He says he feels like if we move here, he'll be giving up on a long-fought-for, not-quite-achieved dream.  That's understandably difficult, and so while I'd be happier in the Midwest, I kinda hope we end up in PA so that he can have the change to do another round on the academic job market, since that's what he wants.  If that round doesn't work out, however, it's over.  Period.  My choice on that.  I can stand to go through this one more time, but after that I'd like to know that we're going to be able to settle down for a while and get around to starting a family and so on.  He's agreed.  The whole academic job search thing is too big a strain to repeat any more than that.

So that's that for the moment.  I hate the waiting, but I'm at least used to it by now.  I feel like that's all I've been doing for close to a year now.

In Limbo

So grades are done with the exception of two potatoes who haven't gotten around to turning in their final papers.  So I await their final papers, sending them nagging emails reminding them that they'll flunk if the papers don't get turned in.  Not my fault - department policy.  I'd rather they just get them in so I don't have to deal with them anymore.  I just want this done and off my back.

Having everything else done and calculated and ready to enter means that I can shower and go buy myself some nail polish, which was the treat I promised myself for getting through the remains of the grading. 

Once the grades are in, it's done.  Like really, truly done done.  And I can find a job doing something else and hope that one day over the next couple of years my motivation to finish the dissertation returns in full enough force that I finish the stupid thing. 

I'm still not sad it's over, so I'm assuming at this point that I'm really not going to be.  Honestly, though, it's hard to feel much of anything.  I have NO idea at this point what's going to happen in my life over the next few months, no idea of what to expect, no real way to make plans.  Brownie had an interview with a college in BFE of this state and they called his references, who reported that and sounded as though college in BFE is really interested in him.  We haven't been to the town at all, so we're trying to keep an open mind, but the truth is that neither one of us is even slightly excited by this prospect.  The idea of packing up and moving back to KC instead sounds so much better, so much more likely to bring employment for both of us, but it doesn't sound definite enough for me to want to hope for it.  Not knowing what to think or what to hope for or what not to hope for so that I don't end up disappointed again has become an exercise in teeth-grinding. 

I guess what I do for the moment is go shower (finally, at 2:30), drag myself out to the bookstore to look at books on writing resume cover letters for a while, pick up my nail polish, grab stuff to make salmon/asparagus pasta for dinner, and then flop with a book or with my laptop and novel for a while.  Something to distract me from me.

On resumes and rediscovering reading

I have a workable draft of my resume finally (erm, well, I've really had one since Sunday evening, but whatever).  So that's good.  That means I can stop with some of the overthinking and the "OMG WHAT HAVE I DONE FOR SEVEN YEARS OF MY LIFE" angsty bullshit that's made the process of writing (and re-writing, and re-writing) it so ridiculous and painful.  Because really, one's spouse's first reaction to reading one's resume should NOT be this:  "this makes you sound like you hate yourself." 

After that reaction, I took a day off and then returned to it.  Rephrased.  Rethought.  Rephrased more.  Talked it out with people.  I feel better now.

Possible interview question: variation on a theme of "what do you consider to be your biggest problem in the workplace?"
Answer:  I overthink things.  I can overthink ANYTHING.  It's like a crippling mental disorder talent.

Resume aside, I'm down to only a couple of classes before the teaching portion of my career is (99% likely) finished.  This puts me at 3 paychecks before I hit the abyss of not knowing where my money will come from.  So that's... terrifying. 

The dissertation really is on hold now, pretty much officially, until Brownie and I are moved wherever we end up moving and I'm in a better head space to deal with it.  The department, bless it, is covering my tuition until it's done.  I actually feel good about this, and in feeling good about this, have been reconceptualizing how I want to go about arguing certain aspects of it.  I had been arguing about institutional change, but what I've really been *trying* (albeit failing) to get across is that the point is to look at the effect of fiction on institutional change, which really then is the effect of fiction on our understanding and creation of reality.  Which, oddly, seems more manageable to me than institutional change itself.  And more fun.  So Imma let that keep simmering in the dark reaches of my brainspace until I'm ready to return.

Meanwhile, I've been devouring books like they're about to poof out of existence.  Lots of books.  The Hunger Games (and Catching Fire)(to feed my Gale crush) and The Elegance of the Hedgehog and Misconception and Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You and so on.  And it has been magnificent.  Like rediscovering an old, dear friend.

It feels almost strange to say "I love to read."  In some ways, I've always felt that way - I wouldn't have pursued a Ph.D. in English without loving to read.  In so many other, more important ways, however, it truly has been a rediscovery:  the joys of perusing books in the book store, of losing track of time while completely immersed in another world, of stories, plots and characters.  For so much of graduate school, reading has been associated with guilt:  if I was something I enjoy for the sake of enjoyment, then I felt guilty for it.  If I read something for class/exams/dissertation work, then I didn't enjoy it; in not enjoying it, my ADHD would flare; in the flare of the ADHD would come distraction, lesser comprehension, and more guilt.  Over the past seven years, reading has been so intricately entwined with guilt that I've largely avoided it when unnecessary.  Suddenly (almost unconsciously) letting go of the guilt has let me read again.  And that makes me really, really happy.  (As a side note, this is the first post that has had a reading tag. That says a lot to me.)

An Odd Brief Moment of Honesty

The Writing Center I work in has meetings every two weeks where we either talk over recent tutoring issues/problem cases/what do I do in X situation or we meet with the head of some group or other on campus to talk over writing issues on campus.  The meetings consist of the Writing Center director (a faculty member in my department) and the tutors, all of whom are Ph.D. candidate-level grad students.

This past Thursday, we had two people from the Career Center come in to talk to us.  One of them came in for the reason we were expecting - so that we could talk over expectations for med school/law school/grad school personal statements.  We see a ton of them in the Writing Center, so it was good to have someone else's version of what it is that each type of school is generally looking for.  Good times and all.  Productive. As an aside, I was amused when she said that successful law school personal statements tend to sound arrogant.

The other person from the Career Center was the Grad Student Career Counselor (the same one I met with a few weeks ago).  She came specifically and only to talk to us about things that people can do with English Ph.D.s.  We weren't expecting her at all - she was someone the director invited along without warning any of us. 

If it hasn't come across by now (given my reasons for being mostly anonymous in this blog), being in the humanities in the academy and acknowledging that you're leaving is often a recipe for disaster.  Typical reactions include being shunned, being called a failure, being told one isn't sufficiently committed to one's scholarship and so on.  I've heard of people saying they were leaving academics and being told that their committee didn't see the point in letting them finish the degree.  I think it's the combined effect of working in a little understood field, one which is desperately difficult to get into, and one which requires pretty much complete dedication to in order to survive.  Add to this the fact that the people who make the decisions on who stays in and who ends up being forced out are themselves professors of the same subjects who themselves have had to maintain decades of complete dedication in order to survive, and you end up with a situation wherein the casual mention of "I think I'm going to do something else" can feel, to those staying in, like a personal attack.  Hence the repercussions I've already mentioned.

Anyway.  Having someone walk into the Writing Center and point out to a group of 15 English Ph.D. candidates - in front of a faculty member - that most of us will end up doing something not-English-professor with our lives was dead shocking.  It felt like the first honest career discussion I've ever had in that building, the first time anyone has allowed us to acknowledge openly that the job market sucks giant donkey balls and that getting out is not only something that we need to consider as a Plan B, but quite possibly something we should consider as a Plan A.

I'm writing about it here because it felt like a breakthrough, at least for my department.  If we're allowed to discuss so-called "alternative" careers openly, maybe it will help cut the stigma that not going into academics is synonymous with failure.  Given the fact that only 1/5 of graduating Ph.D.s will actually get the pipe dream tenure track job within five years of graduation, it seems like the ONLY intelligent thing to do is to have one (or two, or three) backup plan(s) ready to launch.  It's good to know that at least somewhere in my institution, this is something we can finally discuss.

I'm asking the Writing Center director to be one of my references when I'm in tomorrow.  I've worked with him for seven years now so he knows me well, and I know now that I can ask him to be a non-academic reference without worrying that asking him could have some kind of blowback for me with my dissertation committee.

Back to the Adderall

Job-type update:
I now have a profile on linkedin.  It has, well, very little information on it.  Why?  Because I still haven't finished my resume.  It's... extremely strange trying to figure out how to word things in a way that "sells" me as a good job candidate (or indeed good at much of anything).  I'm also not sure if I should be putting as my field the one which currently employs me or the one in which I think I might be tolerably happy in (i.e., I think I'm giving HR a try).  Also not sure whether I should be listing my zipcode as the one in which I'm currently stuck or the one in which I'd prefer to be living in, say, 3 months.  I'm open to suggestions. 

Frustration update:
I think the resume will be finished with Adderall.  I'm too scattered lately for my brain to function correctly.  I'm frustrated to all hell with my class (seriously, potatoes, it's Twilight - please drum up some interest to pick it apart or bash it or whatever - even bashing it would bring up some kind of conversation that I could work with!), I'm behind on grading papers (it's been a week and a half now - I usually never take this long), I still have to finish that wretched book to finish teaching on Friday, I need to get my financial aid stuff taken care of for the summer/fall as I will still technically be a student, I REALLY need to finish a draft of the resume so I can get it out there, I need to help plan one of my best friend's bridal showers (I'm matron of honor and bride's mom is refusing to help with anything - long story, not mine), and I'm still trying to get some writing done on the novel. 

Unfortunately, I've been feeling so pulled around that very little actually got done today (um, this week so far).  Class was awful (I feel like I'm not doing a great job with the text, but I also feel like the fact that one person in the room actually did their homework (i.e., play on the google to find out some idea of the real extent of Twifandom) had something to do with it as well).  (I'm apparently parenthetical happy right now - sorry for that!)  I didn't get much sleep last night either.  The upshot is that I got home, ate something, complained at mah forum ladies about my stupid morning, pixel farmed, and then stared at umpteen word docs to no effect whatsoever while listening to Doves' "Some Cities" album on repeat.  I can't keep doing this, so it's back to the Adderall after the funeral.

Family/Life update:
We spent the evening at Brownie's uncle's house with his family, mostly listening to aunts and uncles and cousins compare eulogies for Brownie's grandpop's memorial.  The family writ large has been inundated with food this week - apparently the main reason we all got together was that there was suddenly enough food from neighbors and other family members that help was rather desperately needed to eat some of it.  I had no idea people still brought food to neighbors after a death in the family.  I think it's awesome that it really does happen.  The memorial service is tomorrow morning.  Brownie's mom threatened us with promised that we'd be the recipients of any fruit baskets she gets, but that she's keeping all the chocolate (her preferred stress reliever).  She planned pretty much the entire service, so I'd say she earned it.  Brownie and I are taking Nutella cookies to her on Saturday.

I should be sleepy by this point.  I'm exhausted, but I always seem to get something of a second wind along about 9:30/10.  I *hate* the timing on this, because I need to go to sleep.  The service tomorrow is at 8:30 way the hell at the other end of town.  I love when I can use this time for noveling, but that's been like pulling teeth out of a pissed off yak the past couple of days.  There's a fight that needs to happen that the characters don't seem ready to have yet, but that I need them to have within the next 12 or so hours of plot.  I can't figure out if I'm forcing the fight when the characters aren't quite ready for it or if I just haven't hit the right head space to write it.  I just can't hear it yet.  I can hear the aftermath loud and clear, but not the fight.  I'll have to backburner it for a few days and see what my brain dreams up while I'm working on other things.  I don't exactly have time to novel at the moment anyway, sadly.

March Beer Week, 2010

Mid-March comes, as it does every year, with the promise of a week filled with MOAR BEER. To illustrate, here are the next few days:

Tomorrow is St. Patty's, obviously (we're having corned beef and colcannon for dinner tonight - squee!).  Brownie's family is mega-Irish (and mega-Italian:  hello East Coast!).  We're meeting a bunch of his aunts and uncles for drinkie bits at happy hour.  I will play my usual St. Patty's  "how many total strangers offer to buy me a drink because I have curly red hair" game.  For some reason, despite my total lack of Irish ancestry, the hair is sufficient for free drinks (or would be if I were willing to take any of said strangers up on the drinks, which I am not).

Thursday marks the beginning of March Madness.  Thursday is also the day of "the game wherein my undergrad's team mops the floor with my grad school's team."  I cannot wait.  I've been getting a bunch of questions from people who don't know me all that well, but do know me well enough to know which schools I'm referring to.  They always have questions about which team I'll be rooting for.  I figure I'll just answer here (despite the fact that pretty much no one who knows me IRL knows about this blog*):  no one in grad school would EVER root for their grad school over their undergrad.  It's simple: undergrad is fun; grad school is soul-sucking hell.  Undergrad wins, every time.

Friday, Brownie's undergrad team has its first tourney game.
Saturday and Sunday, MOAR BASKETBALL.

In between all of this, I really do need to start grading papers so that I don't find myself grading until 3am Sunday night.  I try to get papers back to my students within a week.  Managing to do so reminds me that I actually am capable of getting things done, which gives me a mild self-esteem boost.  I can go for as many of those as possible. 

On the job front, I contacted an aunt of mine who works in HR at large corporation to see if I could bounce resume questions/drafts off of her.  I'm planning on working on an initial draft Wednesday pre-St. Patty's beers and Thursday pre-game.  Here's hoping the research I've been doing pays off.  I'll be posting general thoughts about the format I'm using and the whys and wherefores as the draft gets going.

Side note: while typing this, I've been noticing that my keyboard doesn't seem to be registering every key that I type - if there are words that are missing letters and I managed not to notice/correct it before publishing, my apologies.

*quickie reason for the anonymity at the moment:  the anonymity is nothing I really want to keep up forever.  However, until the degree is completed and I've got a real, non-academic job, I need to keep it relatively anonymous.  The academy is none-too-friendly about people announcing that they'll be leaving its ranks, and I want to avoid any possible blowback from the actual academics I know about my decision to leave until after I have gainful employment: leaving academics is tantamount to burning bridges big time.

Commencing the job search hardcore

This post is likely to be some sort of linkspam type deal, put together from the discoveries I've made this afternoon while researching how the hell to get myself out of academia and into some sort of suitable job.

Questions that I've been wrestling with as I've been researching:
- how do I turn my CV into a resume that is attractive outside of academics?***
- how do I translate 7 years of working my ass off in graduate school into a set of skills that makes sense to the outside world?**
- how do I locate jobs to apply for that I'm not simultaneously over- and under-qualified for?*

* fuck me on this. I'm still trying to figure this out. One of the main purposes of going to my university's career center was to figure this out. The career center gave me some books and sent me on my way. This was NOT HELPFUL. So I'm relying on my researching skills to figure this out.
** I'm researching buzzwords. 6 years as a writing tutor: "good at coaching in one-on-one situations" etc
*** lots of revising, I assume


Things I have discovered:
http://www.leavingacademia.com/ - so far, the most helpful site I've come across in terms of being honest, cheerful enough that I don't regret pursuing the Ph.D. every moment of the day, and realistic enough to say 'yes, you will need to network, etc.'

http://www.beyondacademe.com/ - more of the world of "get me out of here"

#alt-ac : the current twitter hashtag going around for alternate-academic (read: non-professorial careers in the ivory tower) (I'm not as of yet on twitter, but I think I may have to change this)

www.phds.org/jobs/nonacademic-careers/nonacademic-employers-that-hire-phds/ - fairly self-explanatory - a list of employers who actually think that the training that goes along with a Ph.D. has some sort of usefulness to the outside world

listservs - wrk4us is a prime example (which I think I'll be joining)

I also read that it would be worthwhile to join theladders.com - that site that prides itself on the $100K job listings. The point of this isn't to start grubbing for money - apparently the site has some spectacular career advice. I'll be joining up to see what all the hype is about. I'll report back here if there's anything worthwhile.


Anyway, that's what my doings of the day have looked like, despite my sunny and happy "Spring Break is for lovers" post of yesterday. I was hit with a blinding 2am panic attack that I have 5 more paychecks coming before I'll be thrown out to the wolves. Ergo today=work on that.

Probably time to hit the career counselor

Had a long talk with Brownie about everything I was posting about last night - i.e., can I trust that we'll move someplace and be there for more than a year if he's planning on continuing the academic job search - to which his reaction is that he'll only do the job search if we're unhappy where we end up. I'm not fully satisfied with this since I think it takes more than a couple of months (which is all we'd have before the job search starts) to decide if one really likes an area. I honestly think it takes a full year to really get to the point of beginning to understand the rhythms and patterns of a place.

Anyway. So the outcome of the conversation is that I (well, both of us, but this blog is about ME, dammit! :) ) should start putting together a resume and applying to jobs (at this point in either city we've been discussing). This is all good and fine. So I hop on monster.com out of curiousity to see what's out there...
... and haven't the foggiest idea how to figure out what I might be qualified or good at or anything at all. Like, not the foggiest. I'm not unintelligent here. But this job searching thing is leaving me feeling very, well, "buh?"

So I figure I need to go hit the career counselor at University on a Mountain and ask them how the hell I go about figuring this out - this is emphatically not the type of training I'll ever get in my department (especially since I still sort of have to keep up something of a charade that I'm still considering academics, since disclosing otherwise to all but a few people is a recipe for social/political disaster). This should be interesting:
Counselor: "What can I help you with today?"
Me: "Well, I'd like to find a job."
Counselor: "What sort of job are you interested in looking for?"
Me: "Anything but this (i.e., academics)." Because that's about how far I've come in narrowing it down.
So, um, yeah. Should be interesting. If I end up taking some sort of "what kind of job should you be trying to find" type survey, I'm going to laugh my ass off. Those things always tell me I should be a teacher or a professor or a counselor or a priest or a writer. The same variety of options typically appears in my Myers-Briggs type as well (I'm an INFP with a vengeance, if that weren't pretty obvious by now for anyone reading who knows that typing system well enough to guess).

Really, all I'm looking for is a job in "adventures in earning a paycheck" for a time so I can figure out what sorts of strengths and weaknesses I bring to a non-academic environment and can figure out where I'd work best with said strengths and weaknesses. Really.

At least until I get a bestselling novel published. :P

Apparently I wasn't feeling so ambitious

So much for the "I'll try and post every day between now and turning 30" if this is only my second post of the month - whoops. No guilt, though, because I refuse to allow myself to feel guilty about a blog right now. If I have a blog that becomes important for some strange reason, I'll feel guilty about it (er, I'll probably update more, since that would seem to be important). Anyway.

So let's see. A bio prof in Alabama was denied tenure and shot and killed some of her colleagues. I feel horrible for the families of everyone involved in the tragedy, and I hope that they're able to mourn and to work toward healing in whatever manner they need to and without prying media bullshit surrounding them. I hate that I'm not surprised that it happened, however. What I'm surprised (and thankful) about is that it doesn't happen more often.

Brownie got a signature for his dissertation on Monday, which is bloodyfuckingfantastic in that he's finally relaxed enough that he's been able to talk about things other than his dissertation or the job search for the first time since roughly July. So we topped Monday off by getting into one hell of a "discussion" about acceptable levels of stress, the job market, academics and so on, and somewhere in there Brownie announced that he doesn't think he wants to do the academic thing because he hates what it's been doing to our relationship. I hate it too, and have for a long time, and view the problems academic careers can cause in a relationship as one of my major reasons for getting the hell out, but I've also always figured that him staying in or also getting the hell out is something that he needs to decide for himself. He's always seemed to lean toward staying in, and I've dealt with that as best I can by figuring that we are really happy together and that a lot of that happiness comes from being together at home - all the cooking we do together and so on - so that maybe it doesn't really matter where we live, etc., as his going into academics means that we get no say in where we're living.

So then Monday he announces he thinks he wants out, that it just isn't worth it.

Cue me bursting into eleventy hundred tears, because it's the first time in months (maybe longer) that I've started to feel like maybe I'd get some kind of say about where we'd be living. And all of these realizations I've been struggling desperately not to have - that the whole job search thing has been entirely about him and his career, that I'm shoving my career off to the back burner for him, that I'm having a lot of anger towards myself for doing that, that I've been feeling by and large unimportant for a long time because of all of this - all this comes tumbling down all around me. Suffice it to say it's probably good that I've been sick and snowed in all week. Not that I ever lack for introspection, just that the sick has kept me from wanting to cry as much as I probably would otherwise, and the snowed in has meant that the sick hasn't been as in the way as it usually is.

Anyway, we've pretty much narrowed it down to a move to either KC or to Portland, OR. KC is where I grew up - Brownie loves it out there, I have a ton of friends and most of my family out there, and it would generally be (relatively, anyway) an easy move. Plus: thunderstorms. YAY! Oregon, however, is this place that we've both always kind of wanted to live, despite the fact that neither of us has ever even visited - just from the sheer aspects of food, beer, wine, and love of exercise, we both want to live out there. Plus it's fucking beautiful. So as much as I'd love to be around my family again, there's a part of me that wants to move to Portland too, I guess because I have a sort of feeling that if we don't do it now, we never will.

Brownie tells me today while we're out getting drinks that he's not sure he's ready to give up on academics yet. That he might do the job search again next year. And that he really wants to focus in on moving to KC rather than Portland because of all the pro-KC reasons I just mentioned and because for him, it's an adventure either way, which he then acknowledges (albeit jokingly) as being selfish. I'm objecting to the idea of getting rid of Oregon yet simply because this whole "I get some level of say in this" idea is brand fucking new, and I'm not about to close off options any earlier than I have to.

This is probably not a line of thinking I should continue on, because I'm writing myself into more anger than I felt initially about it, and I probably don't need to do that. It's making me think that I do need to reopen the whole "how I've been compromising v. what I've been getting in return and vice versa" conversation, since I'm apparently still pissed. I'm pissed for two reasons. One, that I had allowed myself to hope that we might end up living someplace I'd actually like to live - really, that I'd allowed myself to hope when hoping in this whole mess has done nothing but make me more disappointed than I'm already typically feeling. Two, that he could change his mind and say sure, maybe we could move halfway (or all the way!) across the country come May (or June or July), but don't consider it to be an assurance that we could actually stay there since he may very well decide to do the academic job search again, meaning we'd just end up moving again in another year.

I think I'm starting to reach the end of my ability to push myself and my career off any more than I already have. I need to figure out exactly where my limit is and draw the line, because I am tired of feeling more excited about nail polish than my future career prospects.

In which, after yesterday's ramble, I complain for a time

I'll start off with a simple "today sucked."
Except that today didn't fully suck. Brownie and I went and saw "Up in the Air" FINALLY this afternoon and then crashed at Favorite Pub for dinner and that was fine and lovely. Really, only this morning really sucked.

What happened was simple. Somehow, last night, I'm not sure how, I managed to forget for the first time in my life to take my contacts out.

This, in and of itself, really isn't the biggest problem of all problems. It actually wasn't a big deal for a while. I took the contacts out when I realized they'd been in all night and left them out while I showered. Then I put them back in and didn't think about it, finished getting ready and began to attempt to run errands (biggest errand: I'm out of checks and new checks haven't arrived yet because my lazy ass hasn't ordered them. I need to pay rent. I went to the post office, but the computer there had borked itself and wasn't running debit card payments, so I was unable to procure a money order for my rent payment. As my bank is in KS, merely running by the bank wasn't an option. Anywhere else requires I pay cash, but it's not possible to pull the requisite amount of cash out of the ATM all at once. Ergo, rent remains unpaid (hopefully only) until tomorrow).

As I was driving in the car after running by the second post office of the morning (which was apparently having the same computer issue)(argh), a mote of dust flew into my right eye. Or SOMETHING flew into my right eye. It honestly felt like a giantass chunk of kitty litter. Anyway, it hurt so bad I yelped and damn near wrecked my car by driving it into the car next to mine. I managed to avoid that, but barely.

Being closest to the grocery store (and it being 1pm at this point, and me having neither eaten nor caffeinated myself for the day), I drove the rest of the way there mostly blindly and ran into the store with tears streaming down my face so I could get into the bathroom, pop out the contact, and try desperately to figure out what the hell had gotten into my eye.

Answer: nothing that I could find, although my cornea still hurts and I'm vaguely wondering at this point if I scratched it.

Finding nothing, I popped the contact back in, waited until the pain was more or less tolerable, and ran around the grocery store getting coffee and everything else I needed so I could go home.

When I got home, I got rid of both contacts, still couldn't find anything wrong with my eye other than OWFUCKPAIN, and ended up sitting on the toilet crying in frustration. Brownie knocked on the door to ask if I was okay and somehow ended up being treated to an hour's monologue of OUCH followed by screaming fit followed by me punching myself, the toilet seat and the floor followed by a long sob of existential angst. As the angsty bits have all generally been spewed here before, I'll spare everyone the details. Mostly it was long, self-involved, probably melodramatic, and leaves me wondering if there's a healthy-yet-still-effective way to deal with some of the "O GOD O GOD WUT DO I DO WITH MY LIFE" type feelings, because I sure as fuck haven't come up with one yet.

Brownie has decided he thinks I should see a therapist. I've been telling him I think he should see one since he promised me he would back in November, so I told him this afternoon that I'd bite if he did. I don't know that I should wait for him to, however, as it might actually be good for me to stop feeling like I ought to be able to handle myself and see instead if anyone else has any productive ideas.

At this point, I'm mostly mad that my eyes are still puffy from crying (seriously, eyes, it's been 10 hours, so quit that shit please) and that they still burn from having slept in the contacts. Also my right eye still stings in the same place it started hurting this afternoon in the car and I'd like that to stop.

Mostly, however, what I'd like to be able to stop are the random screaming, flailing, ineffective outbursts that scare Brownie and do nothing to help me deal with anything. I kept trying to tell him once I finally sort of calmed down that all in all I really just needed to get some of the tension out, but he knows and I know that it's a bit more than that. Like I know that I need to get back into running and exercising now that we're back home and I have gym access and above-freezing weather so that running outside is feasible, but I also know full well that exercise isn't going to fix everything; going on a run won't make me feel suddenly fulfilled or like I have some sort of purpose or whatever. I know this. But it might help.

At this point I just need this last fucking semester to be over (she whines before it begins) so that I can move on from this awful and misguided chapter of my life (i.e., the Ph.D. years) and begin to see what life is like outside of supposedly-vaunted Ivory Tower. I also need to cut it with the "I'm worthless and unproductive" type thoughts, because they're not helping a damn thing. I try to stop them when I notice them, but I don't think I really consciously realize that I'm mentally bagging myself until it's been going on for a while. Like having written all this, I'm sort of realizing that much of this post involves me berating myself for flipping out earlier rather than trying to come up with a productive way to deal with it.

Problem: I haven't the foggiest fucking idea how to deal productively with anything anymore.
Solution: ??????
(Step 3: Profit!)

So my problems, are they big? Cheebus no, they're not. I have a roof over my head and a warm apartment and food to eat and an amazingly sweet warm orange furball of a cat sitting on my lap and purring and a wonderful and amazing husband asleep in our bed. I'm honestly fucking lucky that my problems center around general existential angst. I should probably just sit myself down and try and write and try to figure out if there's anything I can do for anyone in Haiti that involves more than just money. So I'll fuck off for now and promise to try to be in a better mood the next time I decide to blither on.





As a final thought: don't do a Ph.D. in the humanities. It damages the soul.

the (*&^%!#@ing academic job search and life in general

So after much durm and strang and gnashing of teeth and application after application after application sent out, Brownie finally has an interview for a nine-month renewable assistant professorship at Small College in nearby, state next door. In a town he'd never heard of, no less, despite having grown up roughly 20 minutes from the apartment I'm currently sitting in. The only thing we know about the town other than that Small College is located there is that Favorite Bartender apparently grew up one town over and was fully ready to recommend the town as a fantastic place to live because it meant we'd still be close enough to come visit during our drinking times. Beyond that, I'm refusing steadfastly to bother doing any research about the town unless he gets a campus visit because I'm tired of looking at towns and going "ooo, that'd be neat, and that'd be awesomesauce" only to see the rejection letter come floating in via carrier pigeon a few days later. I'm tired of feeling hopeful only to be crushed again.

The worst version of the hope/crush feeling happened today, when I woke up to an email from my MOTHER of all people with a job listing for the community college out by them. I would kill to move back there - not to live even all that close to my parents, per se, but to live around the Kansas City area again and to enjoy the insanity that the Midwest refers to as "weather." (Nothing says "Fantastic Drinking Entertainment" like watching helicopters swarm around tornado-producing thunderstorms!) Anyway, so I got way too excited about the job posting and sent it to Brownie, who promised to apply and who then went straight back to prepping for the job interview tomorrow (which, well, obviously that would be the priority). I come to find out later (as I'm dreaming of starting a KC-centric beer blog) that while he's still planning on applying, it's without much of a hope of actually landing the job since they're asking for someone with different specialties than he has. He's still applying, but it's probably going to end up being a waste of time. And so my first (and thus far only) chance of living in any of the cities I'd actually want to move to has 95% poofed away into thin air yet again. The only reason I like the idea of Brownie getting the job at Small College is because it provides a paycheck and a place from which to launch yet another grueling awful job search. I don't understand anymore why anyone wants to go into academics, because the way the field treats its workers is beyond appalling.

Meanwhile, his landing of an interview has made me sit back and try and figure out what the hell I want to do with my life since I'll be telling academics to suck it once the dissertation is done (which I should, uh, probably do something about but whatever). I've come to a few realizations:
- I haven't the foggiest fucking clue what I want to be when I grow up
- I do know that I don't want to be an overacheiver anymore, since that hasn't exactly panned out so well for me
- I'm not sure I've done anything of note this entire year except continue on in my existence and be the good, calming, caring wife for my stressed-out, job-seeking husband
- I don't particularly want to be a productive member of society, but I also don't see that as optional
- I hate that general upsetness/disillusionment/disappointment with my career choices thus far radically outweigh everything in my life that's good when I go about taking inventory of my life, but I've yet to figure out how to stop that line of thinking
- I wonder if I'll ever come up with something to do with myself that doesn't make me feel like the last five years of grad school were a complete and total waste (I don't feel that the MA was just for sheer critical thinking/research skills, but I do feel like the Ph.D. has been)

And so all this shit just circles around in my head and I get stuck and spend a lot of time on the forum or crocheting or playing MarioKart or cooking or whatever because I'm lost on trying to find answers. In accordance with the wide world of astrology, I'm mid-Saturn Return right now, which I bring up only because that does feel roughly like my life right now - everything I've held onto as a way to define myself up until now (read: overachiever, student) has disintegrated around me and I'm left standing here thinking "so that's nice and all, but the fuck do I do now?" I typically tell myself that this is in some way good because this opens up new ways for me to define myself or time to focus on areas of my life that I'd generally left unexamined before and all that rot and all of that is good but I still spend far too much time thinking "well, shit" and then finding a beer. Some sense of rebuilding would be nice - even just a glimmer of an idea of a way to begin figuring out how to rebuild would be nice at this point.

Mostly I really hate that every time someone asks me about my life, I'm prone to telling them about Brownie's life rather than my own because there's so much more going on in his. I won't tell more than a handful of people IRL (and the entire fucking internet, apparently) how I'm actually feeling - the last time I told Brownie how I was actually feeling he said "damn, that was a lot to dump on me" before realizing that he sounded like an ass, apologizing, and then admitting he didn't have a clue what to say and giving me a hug. I'm sure the reaction from anyone else would be at least as charming. DNW.

I sort of suspect I'm probably drinking a bit too much lately, but that's neither here nor there and anyway it's the holidaze. Seriously, though, Sunday's been the only alcohol-free night in a week. The holidays have been really lovely. (Er, one huge screaming fit at my father-in-law aside wherein he had no clue the rage he'd produce in me by saying that it was Rihanna's fault that Chris Brown beat her, but everything else really has been great.) I think I've put on five pounds from all the eating - it's way too cold to go outside and run so I'm at the mercy of my brother's WiiFit once we get to KC on Thursday. Here's to going home for a couple of weeks to attempt to decompress...

Some random thoughts

I went with Brownie and his parents to see 'Invictus' this afternoon. It was okay. I wasn't hugely impressed. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't great. I'm mostly glad I wasn't the one funding the tickets. I think my next film will be 'the Lovely Bones.' I hope it's better.

I read what's written so far of the last third of the novel last night. It wasn't as bad as I feared. It's not quite to the standard of being willing to show other people, but I didn't think it reeked of pointless sentimentality either, so that's a bonus. Part of my goal with the novel is to deal with some extremely emotional situations - i.e., situations that have to be dealt with emotionally because the logical counterpoint isn't/can't be there - without making them seem mawkish or insulin-inducing. However, at the moment my MC is in the middle of making out with her romantic interest, and it's still going to be a while before I allow them into a real relationship, so I'm going to have to break that up and I feel sorta bad about it.

Two passionfruit martinis do not make for easy typing. I've corrected roughly every fourth word I've typed. I might be better off getting off the internet and hitting the yarn/crochet hook for the evening.

Job things for Brownie aren't going well. I had a daydream that I sold my novel for way more money than anyone could possibly expect and managed to keep us afloat (and my bpal habit going strong) for a year until he got a job, but that, like I said, is pretty clearly a daydream. I think one of the things that seems hardest about the possibility of being a writer is not knowing exactly when the next paycheck will come. Like you could sell a book, get a huge paycheck, know you could live off of it for a while and all that and yet still be insecure because really, where does the next one come from? Will it be soon? How much will it be? How can one budget?

After a morning of facebook stalking

The facebook privacy changes have been fun. I've gotten to see much of the profiles of various mythical figures which has been all kinds of good fun. Probably a little creepy, but definitely good fun. I'm a bad person. However, I've also found some fantastic bad poetry, figured out that one guy is creepier and weirder than my wildest imaginings, that a friend has a crush on a damn hot guy and so on, so it's been fun.

I'm also up to three students friend requesting me on facebook, which is some kind of record for me. All three were awesome, so I've actually accepted them.

Beyond that, the semester got me into some really bad food habits - I got up at 10:30, had coffee, and after playing around have realized that it's almost 2 and that I haven't actually eaten anything. It's been like this most of the semester. I've been getting up, having coffee, and then mentally pretending that the coffee (which I take black) is food until some point after normal people have eaten lunch, when I realize that I'm starving. And then I have a huge dinner and don't eat again until the next day. So I'm eating what amounts to probably three meals worth of food, just lumped together twice and mostly at dinner. And I wonder why (stress aside) my stomach has been so ripped apart painful ouch lately. I've got to cut this shit out and start eating on a more normal schedule again. It'll help me feel better when I exercise too.

Bad news on the academicjobsearchfront - the one school that had so far requested more info from Brownie apparently called everyone yesterday to set up MLA interviews and he didn't get a call. So that's out. That was also the only one in an honest-to-god city, so we're off to podunks now. I'm hating this, but more I'm hating what it's doing to Brownie - he's having a hard time not taking all the rejection personally (which is understandable even if it is a bad thing to do) and I just want to give him a really big hug, but really big hugs don't help anything (I'm doing it anyway). I'm scared to fucking death neither one of us will have a job come June first and won't know where our next paychecks are coming from. The current paychecks are already too small to be able to save anything as it is.

The noveling is going relatively well. I've got one conversation that I've already re-written twice to try and get it closer to right - I know I'll have to revise it again later, but it has to end in the right place and have gone in the right directions or it'll screw a bunch of things up. But I'm still plugging away (often til 3am or so), and really am enjoying it. I'm hoping I can have near a draft ready by Christmas so I can take some time away to do the dissertation and then return to it and see if I can make it shiny.

Now to eat before I hose my blood sugar levels or something.