in which I indulge in being negative, so I can stop doing it constantly

[dchenes]

I don't feel useful any more. Probably because everything that has to happen next doesn't depend only on me. Getting an apartment depends on somebody being willing to rent me one, and getting a job depends on somebody else being willing to admit I haven't spent the last two years indulging myself to great expense. Of course, the apartment problem also depends on my being willing to spend more than half of my bank balance on getting an apartment and spending the other part on getting myself out of Ohio in a little over a month, all probably before I have any money coming in. So I start from absolute zero again, and it's not a comfortable place to start from. Particularly when I have one loan I have to start paying in two weeks, and two I have to start paying in November. I've been told that if I can get work as a freelancer, I'm going to be living in poverty for two years, and then it'll pick up. I can't afford that. So I need steady income for two years at least, and I need somebody somewhere to be willing to give me freelance work. The process of getting employment lately seems designed to discourage me before I even start; I don't want to have to expect that absolutely everybody is going to jerk me around as much as possible, but that's what seems to be normal these days.

This apartment-hunting thing is making me nervous. I know what I want, and I know that I probably definitely can't afford it. The problem is, I don't want to move in July and move again in September. Especially if it means I move from living with one set of people I don't know to living with a different set of people I don't know. If I didn't know that life is inherently unfair, I would complain about how I had it all planned out when I left and had it all fall out from under me in April. But that's how it is, and complaining about it won't get me anywhere.

Part of the reason I want to present this paper at the ATSA meeting is because I don't want to forget what it feels like to do what I love and be good at it. I want to show off a little, is what it boils down to. If I have to go back to being a secretary again, I want to be able to remember what it feels like to love what I'm doing.

Going from being a good student to being employed and housed and self-sustaining is like swimming across the river Lethe. By the time you get to the employment side, you forget that being academically good is something you can be proud of, because nobody on the employment side cares.

Here endeth the self--indulgence. Anybody who has read this far probably deserves a medal.

Comments

[marmota.livejournal.com]

Lethe? Sounds more like you've been indulging in a cup or two of the Akheron.