All I/we want(ed) was closure, this has been dragging on since that fateful Friday, April 29th.* Bringing conflicted feelings and not letting us enjoy all the new experiences that come with moving to a new place. A nice, beautiful place at that. Starting brand new jobs (OK, I don't have a real job, but it's something). Going to interviews on the first weeks on the job not once, but twice -- K in the summer and both of us in September.
* Day when K first read the email that brought us to today I didn't blog it until a few days later.
The easiest thing to do would be to just move on, but it's so sad and difficult after K had the most surreal academic job offer refusal conversation ever this afternoon.
Sigh. Gulp.
They truly desperately want(ed) him. And still do. Left all doors open. For those who have experience with academic jobs, this doesn't happen very often, unless they really want you. (It happened with our friend P back in 2007 when he had 5 offers, including one from the place where K got his current/past offer from.) Sometimes, when someone rejects an offer, this person is almost "blacklisted," but this was clearly the opposite of that.
The truth is that the department is in a dire situation right now, two people didn't get tenure and left, they're struggling to hire more people. It's a department with some faults and tons of potential, but budgetary problems at the university level present some constraints (e.g. the low salary for K which makes it more desirable for us to stay here even with my low part-time salary and it was because of the budget problems that there was nothing for me -- I have an insider friend who assured me of that).
And then, there's my current "job" which was one of the main reasons for the decision (there are others, including a conviction that here might be a better place for the boys to grow up) -- I'm enjoying the teaching, but it was positively lovely to think up some potential classes and syllabi.
I know it's a cliché to say this, but it's the best way to describe it. This whole experience felt like an alluring dream that we were going to wake up from at any minute, but that we willingly kept dreaming just to see where it would lead. I often wondered out loud to K if it wouldn't have been better to just to have let it go back in late April/ May when the first email came. The problem is that saying that he was not interested in pursuing this (our #2 option, remember?) would have been a lie.
Here we are today, though. We can decide to wake up from the dream and live on, just recalling what it felt like to walk on that lovely campus, wondering if we would be coming to work there or not. I can go on teaching my classes, but I know that deep down I'll always remember the "dangerous exercise in dreaming" that was designing those syllabi.
You know, I don't even mind anymore that as we get older life only gets more and more complicated. And beautiful. Because if everything were simple and straightforward, I think it would be boring. Over the past 14 years as an expatriate I have learned to let go of so many things... and I think this makes the decision on where to settle down so much harder and fraught with conflicting emotions. It feels easier to just keep going, moving on and on.
Like my dear poet/entrepreneur friend Articulate Dad said, I want to enjoy the canyon and ride the burro, but I wonder what the other path would look like. Especially because the door of the limousine has been left open like that...
yeah, I thought I'd be writing a different post tonight, but this is what I have. And when K told me about the phone call he said he knew I wouldn't like the outcome. I've been shedding a few tears in the past two days as the burden of this momentous decision felt so heavy and I thought that it would all be over after today, but probably not. I'm a little sad right now, and I don't know where to put this sadness because it doesn't fit anywhere...
This is the song I wanted to have included in that post, I hope it works this time. Listening to it soothes me right now...
well, I'll have plenty of time to reflect in the daily posting month that is coming... And I hope the bubble/dream will not burst, but live on.
3 comments:
I think it's for the best, Lilian. You'll feel peace about the decision, soon.
I need to write you an email.
I just know there is a sense of peace headed your way--I do. As Anjali said so well, it might very well be for the best, especially if where you are now feels like the best place for the bpys to grow up.
I wasn't blogging back then, but we moved here to NC for my husband's tenure-track job BECAUSE they had promised me a teaching position as well. Once we moved I interviewed formally and everything and they offered me teaching. But then. someone uncovered a little known nepotism clause buried somewhere and they couldn't let me teach. My husband was angry, I was angry and devastated--it had all seemed too good to be true, and it was. But then that meant I had the gift of a year home with L., and then I started working at my present college as an adjunct and that turned into a full-time job. Anyway, I write all this to tell you that even what seems to be the ultimate dream can turn out to not be at all what you thought it would be. Then better things come along, and things work out for the best.
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