Therapy and staying in the game...for now

I met up with the therapist who helped me get through the few months before my final dissertation push today. It was a good meeting, since she offered a lot of validation for stuff that came before (that I'm still cleaning up) and some pats on the back for being where I am today.

Which is, specifically, about to write a grant proposal and a job application, both due next week. Actually, the job thing isn't officially due until the end of next month, but I figured I should signal my interest sooner than later. It's a tricky job, though; on the one hand, it's absolutely ideal for what I, personally, want to be doing. And, for the most part, it's ideal for what my husband and I both want for our family. But it would entail a four-month separation from him in another country, with me having sole responsibility for #1 and #2, including, among other things, trying to help them acculturate in a place where they don't speak the language and will be away from familiar faces for most of the day. In that sense, I'm a little hesitant about the whole thing. The separation is necessary, for both Husband's professional life and a real estate issue we have, but it would be quite hard on everyone.

The grant thing, in that sense, is easier; however, it's a government grant that has a notoriously high threshold for acceptance, and since I haven't even begun writing the thing, I can't imagine that I'll be successful this time around.

So, lots of stress - not necessarily bad, but not helping the overall transition experience.

Day #2, Losing the Glow

The problem I keep dealing with is that this whole post-academia thing is a rollercoaster. One minute, I'm ready to go all Martha Stewart on my SAHMness (despite the fact that MS herself never, ever did the SAHM thing), and turn into a cooking/gardening/crafting/child-rearing whirlwind of activity. Then #2 starts picking at the same. damned. place. he picks at every day - usually my total dislike of messes involving paper, which are legion around here - and all that drops by the wayside as I plunge headfirst into existential despair.

My brother laughed on the phone earlier, when I said that I was just sitting around counting the days until #2 is five. Which is a good year and a half (+2 months) away. I'm serious, though; five really makes all the difference in the world. Among other things, you can take the kids to the library, let go of their hands, and have a reasonable expectation that they will come back to you when you call. Three year-olds...not so much.

Anyway...there must be something small that I've taken some pleasure in today. The kids did leave me alone in bed all night last night, and they even let me sleep in until 7:45 am...I suppose that's something.

In the meantime, I'm thinking of pulling together a grant application to find funding to work on turning my dissertation into a book. Since interviews are involved, though, I have to have some IRB office somewhere exempt me (they were exempted for the dissertation, so I cannot imagine they wouldn't be this time around). Unfortunately, commercial IRB places seem to charge an obscene amount of money just to be exempted...ugh.

The Mundaneity Project, Day 1

I have some serious Type-A tendencies (which is probably just another way of saying I've been in academia for a very, very long time and have the multiple degrees to show for it). As a result, I predictably have a hard time relaxing and enjoying life. With kids - especially young ones - that's a terrible way to be; you wind up missing so much and then regretting it later on. Hell, #1 is only 5.10 and I already regret little things: not reading to her as much as I could/should have when she was smaller, not getting down on the floor with her and participating in her insane little games...and you can double the regret for #2, with whom I've had a contentious relationship since before he was born (when he wedged his head into my pelvis in a misguided attempt to get out and proceeded to spend a month thinking that he was really on to something).

Point being, I've been given this time - without dissertation, without job, and, critically, with financial support - to do with as I will, and I think it's important to spend at least some of it on a project of discovering the blessings of the mundane. I decided to kick it off today, on Day #3 of the kids' Spring Break, by making myself a fried egg for the first time in my life. Actually, I made two. I'm no great cook, and am particularly and perpetually stumped by how to get pancakes right (or even edible), but these eggs were perfection, if I do say so myself. Yolky goodness surrounded by a slightly crisp white, capped off by just the right touch of salt. Delicious.

Now, on to the laundry and hanging with the kids.

From the Mouths of CEOs

A great article in the Harvard Business Review about the value of Humanities types in business. Makes me feel like I have some worth after all.

Doin' the Adjunct Dance

Or not.

Coincidentally, a community college just up the road from our house had a cattle call interview last Tuesday, for which I made the cut after posting my basic information. The Dean with whom I met raved about my stellar "pedigree," which was gratifying enough, but I hear through the grapevine that the actual person in charge of hiring is too busy to actually hire anyone to teach. In the meantime, the Dean told me that if I haven't heard back "after awhile" that I should definitely call.

So...what do I do? I guess the answer is to call after awhile (I think that less than a week is a little soon), but it's irritating to have to be begging for jobs that barely pay enough to cover childcare expenses, all for the sake of getting into a classroom again and being able to claim - however tenuously - an institutional affiliation.

I've also considered contacting the university up the road, but they seem to have a lot of people who are not actually trained in my field teaching in it (truly, it amazes me that this is even possible. If I professed to know their field and went applying for tenure-track jobs within it, I would be invited for interviews for the sole purpose of laughing me out of the room. But, since it's under the broad aegis of 'popular culture', everyone and their brother thinks they're ready to jump in and teach it). In particular, they have one person who teaches classes that are within my very small sub-field - with a focus on aspects of it that have long since fallen by the wayside. Since it requires knowledge of a comparatively esoteric language, people who have mastered the language tend to think that they have also mastered "the culture." Which, if you've mastered "the field," you know is 1) impossible, and 2) irredeemably pompous.

As a result, though, I'm not sure that there's any point to sending anyone there my CV. But if I don't send it there, and an opportunity doesn't materialize at the CC, I'm not sure what I can try next.

Finished! Now What?

As of tomorrow, it will be exactly two weeks since I successfully defended my PhD dissertation at Big University in the Midwest (BUM), and a week and a half since I returned home to my husband and 2 kids, #1 (5-going-on-6) and #2 (3). Given time-to-completion (one month shy of 7 years following my comps; or, put differently, one month shy of being kicked out) and the gaping three-year hole in my CV (which, amazingly enough, corresponds exactly with my son's age), I have no discernible job prospects and little idea of what's coming next. I'm hoping to work that all out here...or make my peace with the whole SAHM thing, whichever happens first.