Tfw a longtime mutual finally unfollows you after a long silence the same week you find out that you didn’t get either of the jobs you thought were your last best shot and that your (sort of) crush has a younger girlfriend.*
* Both of which I posted about, btw.
No matter what’s going on, it seems like I’m always too depressed to write. I’m not sure if I should try to force myself or not… fandom was supposed to be a source of recreation, not more anxiety.
iscariotsss replied to your post “Basically the only person I’ve been sexually attracted to in the last…”
Ugh like it sounds like he’s not worth your time then?? Join me in finding satisfaction in Lots of Hugging
@iscariotsss, well, it’s possible that the younger woman is such a wonderful, fascinating human being that she’s a better option than me anyway. She’s almost certainly less cynical and misanthropic. Also, I wasn’t really looking for a relationship… or I thought I wasn’t? I’m having trouble parsing my own feelings of jealousy.
I think it’ll be fine. My cat satisfies most of my needs for affection and cuddles.
A professor who taught me when I was an undergrad and who is now at another university and running the search for a postdoc there (let’s call him W) e-mailed me this afternoon to tell me that he’d given the postdoc to another candidate, whom we’ll call B. I actually already knew that, because B (who is my age) is dating a professor in my department, H, and he told me when I saw him at the department on Tuesday and he asked about my job situation. Incidentally, W was dissertation advisor both to H and to B’s dissertation advisor, C; H and C were in grad school at the same time (and are kind of frenemies… or rather, H is jealous of C’s professional success). So H is kind of dating his intellectual niece. And they work in the same subject area. Which just kinda strikes me as a little off… but whatever. Academia is full of incest.
Anyway, the point was that W sent me the following e-mail:
This message is to deliver the news that the [name of fellowship] Postdoctoral Fellow for next year will be [B].
This was a very difficult decision for me to make, and in no aspect was it more difficult than that I won’t be able to offer the postdoc to you. I have several other highly deserving finalists to whom to deliver this same news, but I am telling you first in order to get over with the message that will be the most painful one for me to write.
Whenever I do these searches, and become aware of the highly qualified people who don’t yet have jobs, it makes me sad and angry and makes me wish I had more of these postdocs than just the one. If by any chance you do get a job, please tell me. And if you can think of any way I can help, please get in touch right away.
Which is very nice and all, but… if it was that hard for you, you could have just given me the fucking job.
I just turned in an application I’d been procrastinating on (because I’ve been depressed as fuck) right under the wire – it was due at midnight EDT.
I feel like these days I’m just scraping through life by the skin of my teeth. Like, I manage to get things done, but not easily or with good time management or even particularly well.
The academic job market is a truck and it has run over my spirit.
Sorry I haven’t been able to write or even read much fanfiction recently… I’ve been feeling seriously anxious and depressed about the job market. You wouldn’t think that would have an effect on my reading habits, but it puts more pressure on reading when the writer is someone you (sort of) know and you want to be able to leave a thoughtful comment but your brain is mush and/or a constant scream. Plus it seems like everybody is writing heavy angsty stuff these days, which doesn’t pair well with real-life angst (at least in my case).
Well, I didn’t get the job I had the fly-out for, and I probably won’t get the postdoc I wanted at my undergrad university, so I’m drowning my sorrows in ice cream, Scotch, and season 2 of “Jessica Jones.”
How am I sick again/still? I thought I was getting better, but as of yesterday I have a fever again and the cough has gotten worse. My voice is so gravelly that I had trouble making myself understood while calling to schedule a doctor’s appointment. I’ve been nauseous from coughing up and then swallowing so much phlegm. (TMI, yeah, I know.)
I apologize to anyone who’s waiting on answers or fic updates/requests from me. I finally have some free time and then my body decides it hates me, which means that my brain isn’t functioning all that well, either. I’ve scheduled a doctor’s appointment for tomorrow so maybe I’ll find out what’s going on. Really hoping whatever it is is bacterial so I can take antibiotics and it will go away.
Update: it does appear to be bacterial bronchitis (opportunistic secondary infection post-flu); I have been prescribed a course of antibiotics and started taking it ASAP, so I hope I’ll be functional again tomorrow.
How am I sick again/still? I thought I was getting better, but as of yesterday I have a fever again and the cough has gotten worse. My voice is so gravelly that I had trouble making myself understood while calling to schedule a doctor’s appointment. I’ve been nauseous from coughing up and then swallowing so much phlegm. (TMI, yeah, I know.)
I apologize to anyone who’s waiting on answers or fic updates/requests from me. I finally have some free time and then my body decides it hates me, which means that my brain isn’t functioning all that well, either. I’ve scheduled a doctor’s appointment for tomorrow so maybe I’ll find out what’s going on. Really hoping whatever it is is bacterial so I can take antibiotics and it will go away.
I’ve been invited for an on-campus visit (or a “fly-out,” as we call it in the biz) next Thursday and Friday, which means that I have to quickly reacquaint myself with my job talk, which I haven’t practiced since November of last year (as in 2016), and prepare a teaching demo. So I’m not going to be really active on here in the near future – it’s just a “post a chapter and run” – and I’ll probably be scaling back in general.
Loki is the Philosopher King 