As you might have guessed, both Gadget and I have been all too busy for the past 6 weeks with moving, working out bush, job applications and interviews and the usual round of pre-Christmas socialising. We’re both bordering on exhaustion and looking forward to the holidays. I don’t think we’ve caught up on our post-moving exahustion yet. We’re both tired and grumpy and ready to tell everything to go jump.
To begin with, we’re both waiting on interview results – Gadget for a promotion & me for a university job (a post-doc position). Let me tell you it’s painful. What should take a week, at this time of the year is taking two or more weeks. I could write more – especially about the bizarre unfolding of events that one of us has had to endure – but I guess I can’t. Those of you in-the-know will know exactly what I am talking about. Perhaps the most amusing line comes from one of my own interviews. When I asked how long until I found out, the reply was, “Not long. About fourteen days…” PAUSE “… Oh… and there’s the Christmas break. That will slow things down. Oh… umm… you’ll probably know in the second week of January.”
So I have to spend the next FOUR WEEKS stressing over whether I’ve got this position or not. Entire civilisations have fallen in that time. Do people actually understand how dreadful this is? What kinds of mental health effects it creates for applicants? My whole life feels like it’s on HOLD. Both of us feel like we’re being tortured to a silent, wimpering, but nonetheless, painful death!
Anyway, Gadget finishes work today until mid-January, whilst I have to wait til next week. Those last few days are always tortuously slow. Doubly so when your other half is at home chilling out and you’re still at work, trying not to look too bored and disinterested. I am not too ashamed to admit that I don’t want to be at work at all at the moment.
And then there’s Christmas. So far, I’ve written zero Christmas cards and bought only two Christmas presents. I am hoping to improve on this dismal effort by the end of Thursday next week, my first official day of leave. Until then, I have to sit on an interview panel, go to yet another Christmas party, write another job application, and generally try and finish up a few projects before I go on leave. In all, I feel like I’m in the last few weeks before giving birth – that frustrating time when you don’t have the energry to finish what you’ve started and don’t want to start anything new… in fact, you’re just exhausted and stunned into inaction by the sheer insurmountability of the unknown time for which you will have to wait in order for the really hard, important work to begin.
… I am so over all this.
