nerves

Wow, long time, no see, blog readers.  Do I still have blog readers?  I wonder.

I now see that many things have happened since I last posted here, and yet in many ways, it's all the same.  Here are some updates for you.

I ended up submitting five applications for faculty jobs this past year.  Of the five, I was (relatively kindly) rejected from two, asked to interview for two, and still haven't heard back from one.  I'm assuming that last one is a rejection at this point.  But I did indeed interview for the other two at the LSA Annual Meeting in early January, and now I have been invited for on-campus interviews for both of them.  The good news, obviously, is that this means that I will probably someday get a faculty job, whether it works out this year or a bit down the road.  The bad news is that it's incredibly stressful.  I keep telling J, "I'm tired of this life."  And I really am.  Of course it's exciting thinking about getting job offers for either of the places I'll be visiting in February, but it's also absolutely exhausting.  Not only do I have to fly across the country a few more times (because heck, why not, right?), I have to prepare a bunch of long talks that I'll be giving in front of panels of faculty and students who are judging me and deciding if they might want me to come work at their university.  Not to mention the emotional stress involved in never knowing where I'm going to be from one year to the next... coupled with the fact that this next move is hopefully going to be the last.  I'm essentially waiting for the judgment day that finally decides my fate.  Where will I end up?  Or will I stay in State College for another year?  There's really no way to know.  Ever.

And more good/bad news on top of it: the manuscript proposal I submitted was accepted! Of course, this is wonderful news in many (most) respects.  The bad part is that it's also due in February, which means that I'm just a big freaking ball of nerves right now.  I have this simmering sense of low grade panic that I just can't shake; what if I can't get all this work done?  What if all of this stuff I'm trying to do right now is just too much to deal with at one time, and it all ends up sucking?  It feels kind of like juggling a bunch of water balloons or something.  Chaotic, slightly uncomfortable, but maybe a little bit fun?, and if they all hit the ground they'll explode and I'll momentarily feel like I failed in a big way, but then ultimately I'll probably have to laugh at it.  Because who's crazy enough to juggle a bunch of water balloons, and really, who cares if they all explode all over the pavement?  It's just water.

I can play the violin now, sort of.  It's amazing what a few months of practice will do.  I'm glad I have that as a bit of a barometer, I guess; even though my emotional state is very same-old-same-old, and probably will be until I figure out how to exit the job-induced loop in which I find myself, I know that time is passing and I'm accomplishing things, because four months ago I didn't even know how to hold a violin, and now I have callouses on the fingers of my left hand and have played my way through the first Suzuki violin lesson book.  So that's something.

After I had my job interviews at the LSA, I came back to the hotel room and just sobbed.  The interviews actually went fairly well (and I guess this is corroborated by the fact that they turned into campus visits), but I just had to get the nerves out somehow.  After I finished sobbing, I went for a long run along the Willamette River, partially in the rain, and then I came back and sobbed some more.  I'm tired.  I'm tired of this in-between, always-waiting, perpetually-temporary state.  Hopefully it will only last a little bit longer.