The dissolution continues…

Life is not a novel.  Because of my voracious reading habits, I tend to want to see my life as a plot with an identifiable trajectory.  Each year that goes by I try to fit in what’s going on with how I remember my personal history.  Maybe everyone does this to some extent: the stories we tell ourselves are an important part of our identity.  And they can be powerful.  Generally though I am skeptical of reading too much meaning into a concatenation of circumstances.

Nevertheless, it is difficult for me to avoid viewing this period of my life as a time of dissolving the old and ushering in the new (I hope there will be something new).  If I wanted to be dramatic about it, I could say it’s a metaphorical death and rebirth, but phoenixes are somewhat overused.  Thinking over the past 6-9 months, here are some of the things that have happened:

–My academic job search totally failed (expected, but still confirmation of an ending)

–My first Kindle, with thousands of books on it, died and could not be resuscitated

–My classic iPod, companion of my days and nights, with many hundreds of audiobooks and backups of important pictures, died and could not be resuscitated

–My computer, with seven years of work and personal writing, died and could not be resuscitated

–I withdrew from two academic conferences

–I started to re-define myself as a non-academic job candidate

–I realized that ageism is real and that to most people I am middle-aged (wait, what? Yeah, it’s true).

–My mother had spine surgery (again)

–My father was hospitalized for a few weeks (home now and apparently ok; we’ll see when I visit next weekend)

–My first and most precious teacher died (this week; hence the silence of the past couple of days)

I don’t want to be melodramatic.  All the same, I have to admit there are days when this looks to me as if the universe is trying to wake me up and let me know that it’s time to start moving in a different direction.  Or that I’m going to be pushed in a different direction whether I like it or not.  The two most important teachers of my life are now deceased.  My parents are not in imminent danger but they are pretty clearly at the point when it’s going to be more about me and my brother taking care of them than them taking care of us.  It’s never impossible to have a mentor but I’m at a stage when other people expect me to be a mentor instead of an apprentice.  I have an instinctive resistance to this because I’ve always been most comfortable as a student, formal or informal.  Pretending to be authoritative on some subject has never been my strong point–which may indeed have something to do with my failure as a would-be professor.

Yesterday I had an awful, terrible headache.  PILW claimed it was a migraine; maybe it was, although I have never been a person who is subject to migraines or indeed to many illnesses at all.  Disgustingly healthy, that’s me, most of the time.  Since moving here though I’ve started to get headaches with changes in the weather.  Yesterday I think it might have been brought on by a lot of crying the day before as well as a shift in temperature and pressure.  Or maybe, as PILW suggested, simply an accumulation of stress.  Overall I think I’ve been dealing with stress pretty well, but then again, when you start to make a list of current stressful things, my list is rather extensive.  I spent most of the day lying down.  The pain in my head made me feel nauseous.  You are correct if you guessed that I did not accomplish anything yesterday.  Only this morning after a second dose of excedrin did the headache break. Things might be on the right track again.  And it is sunny.  So, in the spirit of looking forward, not back, and emphasizing the positive, here are things that are good right now:

Job Search things

1.  Had a follow-up interview yesterday for a position which would be a great fit for me.  I think it went ok.  Best case, they want to hire me.  Worst case, a very competitive elite institution views me as a close finalist for an exciting job.  I can live with that.

2.  My erstwhile advisor spoke to the hiring person for the above position when he called for references.  Advisor said that he (hiring person) seemed very positive about my candidacy and advisor did everything he could to further the positive impression.  Thank you advisor!

3.  I got an invitation to visit a different campus for an alt-ac interview.  Stressful, but yes, it is good to have choices.

4.  I have another first interview by Skype next week.

5.  I got some interesting information about data science and what it might take to get a master’s in data science. (On a whim I entered my e-mail address and phone number on the site for an online MIDS program, and got a call from an admissions counselor within hours.  Impressive).  I’m not sure that’s something I want to do–the payoff would have to be pretty darn big to get me to consider going back to school.  But the person I spoke to confirmed that learning Python is important, and that helps me narrow down my “what to learn next” list.  He also confirmed that my background and experience might make me a competitive candidate, which is good to know.

Non-job things

1.  It’s sunny!  And beautiful!  And warm!

2.  There are flowers!

3.  There are four avocados in the kitchen which have reached just the right point to make a big bowl of guacamole for tonight’s dinner.

4.  Age of Ultron is out and PILW and I might go see it this weekend.

5.  My headache has retreated.

6.  I have a bike.  I love to ride my bike.

7.  I am healthy.

8.  I have plenty of supplies and things around to make creative stuff.

9.  My brother is awesome.

10.  Yesterday the team doing renovations across the street dropped off promotional materials on our front porch.  It’s one of the best promotions I’ve ever seen: there was a flyer in a plastic bag and also in the bag was a rubber duckie!  A rubber duckie with a white hardhat and an orange construction vest, holding a roll of blueprints under one wing.  Really quite clever, and appropriate since the company apparently specializes in kitchen and bath remodeling.  I’m not a fan of junk mail and the kinds of flyers that get rubber banded to the front door handle but this was so cute and original, I can’t help liking it.

Have a great weekend everybody!

Drizzly day of good news

No, not a job offer.  But I did get another first interview request today, and now I have a Skype session scheduled for next week.  The position is similar to others I’ve been interviewing for but might have a greater emphasis on creativity.  That would be fine by me!   And I got an invitation to a campus visit at one of the places I Skyped with last week.  Woo hoo!  No guarantees, but it means I’m still under consideration, and at the worst, I get to visit a part of the country I’ve never been to and talk with some friendly people about interesting stuff.

Both of these things make me feel good.  They give me hope that my current situation of uncertainty will not last forever.  If I were a Buddhist I might have something meaningful to say about my current spiritual and emotional malaise.  In order to preserve some kind of sanity I am trying not to get too excited, nor to wallow in despair.  It’s like standing on a raft and trying to bend your knees to compensate for waves so that you can maintain a steady line of sight.  I am attempting to remain detached and not become emotionally bound to any particular outcome; at the same time I am trying to be a fully active participant in this job search business and take initiative to help myself move forward.  (Obviously.  I mean, no-one else is going to do my job search for me, right? I have to take action).  Being active without being attached is a challenge. Ten or twenty years ago I’d have been a blubbering mess.  Now, I’m uncomfortable, but I’m still able to function. It’s odd how when you are young, significant changes bear the weight of forever but as you get older you realize that change is simply change; few changes are for the rest of your life unless you want them to be.

Survey thoughts

One of the things in my e-mail today was an invitation to take an online survey created by a researcher at Harvard who is trying to investigate PhD career paths.  To which I say, excellent, and please complete your study and publish the findings as quickly as possible so that it can be added to the growing piles of evidence that getting a PhD does not guarantee employment.

At this point I would be lying if I said I’m not depressed about the job search.  True, last week was a good (though exhausting) week, with three interviews, and two of them second interviews at that.  But, even if the interviews were good experiences, even if people were friendly, even if I presented my best self and showed that I can do the job…  there is no certainty of employment until someone says “We want to offer you the position”.  None.  I wrote my thank you notes, reiterated my interest, attempted to be professional but warm, and that’s great; I’m doing all the right things and practicing good job searching behavior.  All the same, I find myself thinking more and more about being unemployed.  Since I was 15, the only period of time during which I did not have a job lined up was the few months immediately after graduating from college.  When I look back on my work history, I’m kind of astounded both that I have worked nearly continuously for thirty years and that I managed to do a ton of interesting things as well.

Recently reading frugality blogs has become one of my avoidance behaviors.  When I first got a “real” job in an office building after college, a job with benefits and a pension plan (yes, I entered the work force that long ago) and 401K matching, I loved keeping track of my spending.  My foot-in-the-door job was vacant because the previous person had been promoted in the same department.  At the time I met her she was studying for actuarial exams.  She took me under her wing and taught me an enormous amount about the office, about how real life works, and about life in general.  I think it was she who first introduced me to “Your Money or Your Life”.  I started keeping careful records of my spending habits and when I got my first computer one of the first applications I bought was financial software.  I loved watching savings mount.  I loved eating cheaply (I could do this in part because I had a large garden).  I loved being able to afford all the tools and resources that I had only dreamed about as a student.  My income mounted steadily and by the time I was considering grad school I had bought a condo in a very expensive city and had savings of more than $15K.  (Yes, I should have invested some of that; it did no good in a bank savings account).

When I started grad school, I became a financial ostrich.  I didn’t want to know how much my life was costing me and how little I was bringing in.  This started a long period of financial ignorance.  I cut my spending as much as I could, put in as many part-time hours as I could, and hoped that it would all work out somehow.  It kind of did.  My savings disappeared eventually.  A few small grants helped to cover necessary travel costs.  Family helped some.  There was that one autumn in which my furnace wouldn’t start, and I couldn’t afford to replace it, so I went through a northeastern winter without heat.  Eventually the appliances that had been new when I bought my place started to fail, and I couldn’t replace them.  The clothes I’d worn as a new grad student started to wear out and I couldn’t replace them.  One day I wore one of my favorite pairs of shoes to the office and one of the shoes felt a bit odd… when I got there I looked at the bottom and discovered the sole was split right across, broken in half along the ball of the foot.  It was all rather dismal. Something I hoped I’d never have to go through again.

I’m not there yet and I hope I won’t be.  But I am worried.  I’m trying to balance realism with optimism, never an easy task for me.  I keep trying not to spend any money, and things keep coming up: the need for a new computer.  The need to go visit my Dad.  I read financial blogs making resolutions to myself:  when I have a salary, I’m going to do this with my income.  I’m going to save this amount and then I’m going to figure out how to make some money on the side so I can save faster and I’m going to chart my path towards financial independence and figure out how to never again be dependent on someone else liking me enough to give me a job.  I look at my Dad, who ended up in a terrible financial situation because he wouldn’t take action on things that needed to be done, and I pray I won’t end up like that.  I pray that I can figure out how to find initiative and motivate myself to take control instead of merely reacting to my situation.

Maybe that is the crux of my depression today.  As in academic work, one of the hard things about job searching is that you can do everything right and still not get a job.  Not get the one you want, the one you’d hoped for, the one that seemed ideal, the one that’s an easy commute, the one in an area you want to live.  It makes me feel powerless and helpless, and I don’t like that.  I hate the feeling that a computer algorithm somewhere is deciding that I’m not good enough, and I don’t want to be another anti-heroine in the “middle-aged woman with PhD tried to change careers and fell off the precipice into poverty and homelessness” narrative.  I want to change the story.

Tra la!

There are days in spring when the outdoors beckons.  When the air is so soft, the temperature so balmy, the sunlight so playful that staying indoors is torturous.  Today was one of those days.  The cherry tree outside my front window is in full bloom.  The lilac bushes are starting to leaf out.  Some trees have a slight film of green.  There are dandelions amongst the shaggy grass.  I rode my bike without a jacket for the first time this year and it was heavenly.

When the sun is shining it is difficult for me to feel as anxious as I usually do.  I know that sunshine doesn’t solve anything. It is not beaming down magical employment. It will not pack moving boxes or solve the problems of aging parent care or write cover letters or bring an e-mail that says “you’re hired!”  My situation hasn’t changed, but sunlight makes it more bearable.  It allows me to push back worry for a few hours and enjoy the breeze on my face and the dancing flowers.

Fortunate Friday!  Job Search things

1.  A potential employer asked for permission to get in touch with my references.

2.  I survived three interviews this week!

3.  My computer is slowly getting back up to speed.

4.  I’ve been offered another chance to talk to the people at the place where I felt so bad about the interview.  This probably (?) means I’m still under consideration.

5.  More jobs are being posted every day.  I know this is not personal to me, but hey, we all need encouragement and it helps to know that employees are being sought.

Other things

1.  I have some days by myself while PILW is out of town with family

2.  My brother is coming to visit my Dad, and it looks like we’ll be able to be there together

3.  My brother is supportive and cooperative in this whole parent hospitalization business, and we are talking openly about the legal things we need to have in place.  This is hard, and scary, but I’d so much rather do it this way with a brother to help than address issues when things are really desperate.

4.  Flowers!

5.  Sunlight!

6.  Breeze!

7.  Apple pie!  all for me.