Pencils Sharpened

There's something of the feeling just before taking a standardized in all the preparations I've just completed - pencils sharpened, confirmation letter in hand, nought to do but take a deep breath and wake up early the next day. The cover letter, in its various incarnations depending upon institutional demographics, is ready. The writing sample, a re-write and Americanization of a portion of my thesis, is finished. The CV is stylish and up to date and preposterously flattering. The endless list of addresses has been prepared for the dossier service. I've summarized the entirety of my research and my beliefs about teaching into a paltry few pages, and indicated how I'll change the world and do the grunt work too, with a smile on my face and a one-handed juggling act no mortal has attempted before. All that's left is to copy and paste a bunch, print out the first 18 sets with ever-so-slightly-different requirements, and head down the post office.

And then, of course, it's hurry up and wait. As I've been hurrying-up-and-waiting for nigh on a year now, however, I'm getting good at it. While, of course, attending to back up plans, back up back up plans, and weighing my alternatives' alternatives. Procrastination has taken the form of cooking and a compulsively clean flat. The recent dip in my standards of neatness is, however, a comforting testament to the actual accomplishment of work. I'd love to press the great fast-forward button in the sky to mid-December, when the calls, in'sh'allah, start coming in, but I've way too much to do before then. Including a paper to write, to be presented in between interviews, as I'm a fool, a nut, or just desperate to be perceived as sufficiently inside the accepted confines of the North American academy and therefore willing to face the hyper-exposure that comes along with it. It'll either prove to be tactically savvy or a horrific, career-ending embarassment. Or, worse, largely irrelevant. Moderation, it's the new black...

Excuses

Drinking and posting. Not that I've drunk enough to drink and dial, and therefore I'm not intoxicated enoguh to drink and post. But just enough to come home and blast the music that I've composed over the last two+ years, enough to sing along and dig up the sad, pathetic, anti-poetic lyrics I've scrawled and somehow been unembarassed by because they're sung rather than written. Fully 8 months since I had the place and the space to write music, and now I'm staring at a wall, wondering if a few well-placed shelves might make it possible again. Which is to say, "I have this thing I do in order not to work, that seems substantive, inasmuch as it's creative rather than consumptive." Net value, however, is anybody's guess. "Consistency is all I ask and all I ever wanted / Consistency is all I lack." Just pretend I'm a 13-year old Polish girl, blogging my boy troubles. It's less embarassing that way. And this space, too, confined and limited by audiences. So my music plays on, the first thing I wrote in 2002. Impossibly long ago. Perhaps the upcoming trip back to England has me? Has me here has me there has me off my feet and desparate for more? Or perhaps it's the self-indulgent construction of self? The "I have work to do. I know! I'll buy a book of Celan's poetry and re-read A Sentimental Education and then I'll be fucked up" impulse? But even my pathetic attempts at creating sound sound, to me, like the desire for something bigger, something more important, something somehow more real. Ah, to be 17 again, when this came un-self-consciously. Or perhaps it never did. Yet another construction. My name's Matt, and I'm a professional critic....

one year

Damn blogger for being down. My rather rare impulse to post has been thwarted repeatedly over the last few days by a combination of fever, exhaustion, work, and blogger. One year and two days ago I submitted my thesis. It seems impossibly long ago, in so many ways, and just yesterday in others.

Application season is upon me, and I'd like to ask a perhaps overly reasonable question. Why do all of these institutions insist on slightly different versions of the same thing? For the past few days, I've been negotiating demands for "no more than a 2 page research proposal" and "four to six pages on your research." With "a single spaced page on your teaching interests" and "no more than three double spaced pages on your teaching interests, including two proposed courses for our perverse departmental requirements." Admittedly the departments and institutions demanding these things all want to feel special, but they ultimately all want the same damn thing - someone good, who will fit well. And all I'm saying, as I re-invent myself (and the wheel) over and over and over and over again, is "I'm good! Check me out! I'll fit well!" But the process is vastly over-complicated by the niggling differences between requirements, when the expectations are in fact identical. It's a bloody cottage industry, not a process. Not to mention "submit online," "submit 3 hard copies by post," and "submit online and 5 copies by post." These are post-docs, while the wheels of time turn closer to proper jobs, and some of them have an application fee, which I find utterly reprehensible. How _dare_ they ask 20 or 30 dollars of me for consideration? From the (disheartening) numbers they provide on the websites, these postdoctoral fellowships receive 400 or 1000 applications for 4 positions. There is no fucking way (pardon my French) that the 12,000 or 30,000 dollars in application fees is necessary to pay for the processing of these applications. Plus it's not as if the private institutions in question are in any way underfunded.

End rant. A year ago was the last time I was in love. Even in the midst of the craziness of finishing the degree, of applications, of working a shite job, I met someone at the worst possible time and it just worked. I miss that, terribly, as it seems it will continue to be the worst possible time for at least another year or so, yet this time there's a line I can't allow myself to cross. Or there's simply been nobody to cross it for. Normally I withdraw when up against the wall of stress, self-scrutiny, and deadlines. But I remember what it was to go through the process looking out, rather than in, and a large part of me laments the difference this year. "I'm moving to New York. And, oh yeah, I think we should end things." Ineptitude in the break up scene taken to spectacular new lows last November. And ludicrous drama with the woman in question a year ago today. Regrets. I tend to be opposed to them on general fucking principle, but they sneak in around the edges.