Job available-- but am I?

A job I may be quite qualified came open this week.  It pays substantially more and would involve more projects and public relations, and is at my current institution.  Should I apply knowing there's a chance that J might get a job soon?

But haven't I been asking myself that for the past three years?  I have held myself back in my current job by riding my hopes on another person.  And now that it (J's job) may actually happen soon, there's this job. That I would be silly not to go for.

But once again, I will have to bite my tongue and let another opportunity  pass away.  Who knows when J will get a job?   He will be graduating mid-May, but so far we have no bites.  I say "we", but it's starting to grate on me*.  I don't have anything to do with this.  I am completely at the whim of someone else's career.

It's not a good time to be angry, but I am.  I am my own person and I am good at my job, but I am losing myself in his job search.  Even at work, now that my boss knows he's graduating, it is assumed that we're leaving and I'm being treated differently.  I HAVE NO CONTROL OVER THIS. This would have been easier if he wasn't a student, and I wouldn't have had to tell anyone what was happening.  But with working with faculty... they were going to find out.  Now I'm awash in uncertainty not only in my own mind, but coming from those around me.

So, how can I apply for this job and still feel honest?  I don't want to not try, and then six months down the road J still doesn't have a job.  A month ago that thought wouldn't' have even crossed my mind, but who are we kidding?  The economy sucks and no one has contacted him about any of his applications.  It doesn't matter how talented/skilled/educated you are right now.  We could be looking at a long, dark haul.

Can anyone understand why trying to get a new job, especially in the same institution, would be a bad idea right now?  Even if I got it, if we had to move less than a year later, I would be leaving a bad reputation at a place I would have been remembered fondly, if only I hadn't wasted their time.  Plus, it's probably gotten around that J is graduating, so they won't even consider me.  Who would?  I wouldn't.

It's an endless fucking cycle of self-effacement, obnoxious martyrdom and failure.  Failure before I can even try.  I am just so tired of waiting.

*J isn't grating on me. He is wonderful and supportive and working really hard.

The scale of opportunity

More blog-searching today (and somehow this is a productive day at work) and I found a "trailing spouse" blog, albeit an expat* one.  She doesn't like the term trailing spouse either**, but her blog is endlessly positive:

As a trailing spouse, identity can be a tough thing (because if you're like me, that last thing you want to be called is a "trailing spouse"). But if the career you had before isn't going to work out abroad (or you lose yours via a layoff like me), maybe there's something else you'd love to do and try. Maybe, in fact, this is your big opportunity for that something you used to put on hold. 

Chantal at One Big Yodel 

I don't want my opportunity, a positive thing, tinged with the fact that I only have it because it's the consolation prize for having no control***.  Here's my internalized misogyny (it's just popping up way too much this week) again, in that I can't see my worth if I didn't come to it myself, as if taking that opportunity is just backsliding into a dependent female role. I don't, however, feel this way when it comes to education.  If J was working and I was going back to school or taking classes in whatever field I settle on, that feels ok. But if it's to start an Etsy or make Halloween costumes (traditionally female pursuits) it's not.  See what I did there?  Thanks world.  You've made me a woman-hater.

How do I cleanse my mind of these tendencies?  I feel fucked all-around.  And I haven't even touched upon the stink of privilege in all this.

*I'm more interested in domestic relocation.
**Yeah, I changed my title again, because no one's going to find this blog otherwise.
***I'm speaking for myself, not Chantal.  She has her shit together.

Academia to Industry

J's been thinking about the possibility of moving his attention to industry or government jobs instead of academia.  There's lots of good reasons for this, and most of them mean that things will be better for me (except for the possible cheap tuition), but I got incredibly freaked out.  He says there's no way he wouldn't finish his PhD (too damn close) but the seemingly sudden change from life in academia to "What would it be like to work at Mac?" at first seemed like an odd lapse of attention.

We had a friend who got married. Less than a year later that friend decided he was gay.  That freaked me out too, because nobody had any idea! These things coming out of nowhere, when you think you really know somebody, things that change the game plan, this is the feeling I got. The, I-can't-control-anything feeling.  So, even though Industry gives us better options, I couldn't shake the feeling there had been a bait-and-switch.  Why had I been waiting around all during grad school?

There wasn't really a fight, just me wailing and throwing out some tired whining about tying myself to someone and following for the rest of my life (yeah, find an answer in there that you can live with).  If Industry is such an option, why was this the first time we'd talked about it?

It also made me realize that a lot of things I get angry about, information I was never given, wasn't necessarily information he had at the time.  When we got married, he never thought it would take him over six years to get a PhD.  All the sweet things he told me, he really believed.  It was my fault for believing it and not doing my research.  I also realized that I am SO LUCKY that I didn't have the drive to go to grad school.  I'm not that guy.

Ugh, cans of worms over here.  Lots of love and devotion, but a whole lotta worms.

Happy Valentine's Eve!

[UPDATE: I just wanted to make sure that the anecdote about the friend coming out was not to say that coming out is horrible, but the situation was an unnerving surprise.  Everyone wants the one they love to be truly happy, but my heart breaks for her every time I think about it.  It's hard not to think about how I would feel in that situation.]

Foot in Mouth Disease

[Rant warning-- sometimes these things need to come out]


You don't have time? Then why are you hanging out with me?  File this under graduate student marital difficulties.  Maybe I'm over-reacting, but when we're out having a good time, don't start jawing about how you should have come home sooner on the car ride back.  It makes me feel like 1) you didn't want to go in the first place (remember it was your idea, though), 2) I'm the reason you're not getting enough work done, 3) you don't have the gumption to speak up for your own time line and feel it's easier to make it seem like my fault.

It isn't.

I was under the impression that I was making a lot of choices that benefit my spouse and his future career, and that he could figure his own schedule out.  If he doesn't have time to go out, a date, come home for dinner, go grocery shopping, he should say something before instead of after the fact.  It's even worse when we were having a really good time out, and that retro-actively ruins it all. I have been planning my life around this person and he won't take responsibility for his daily schedule? Really?

This is something that has happened before.  Maybe you've gotten this impression from my blog, but I don't keep things bottled up and speak up if someone is doing me wrong.  I don't let things explode.  Since we've had this discussion before, I wish he would just realize that responding to me in a hurt voice when I'm speaking my mind at a normal inside-voice level makes me feel like some kind of monster. A monster who is working a job she hates and has her life pretty much on hold so he can pursue his dreams.  I am so scary!

I'd rather he just spend much less time with me, and save up the time he REALLY has to spend doing it in earnest, not worrying the whole time how he's going to catch up. Because that doesn't really count as being there.  Even worse, after these fights* he has to hang around the house until he feels like things are better between us, which makes me insane because the argument started because he needed to get to work. GET OUT OF THE HOUSE THEN.  I know he doesn't want to leave with bad feelings between us, but it makes me nuts!

So, I hope he gets a lot accomplished today, because my Sunday is ruined.

*Luckily, and I realize how lucky I am every day, these are the only things we fight about,  other than some tiffs over cleaning.  He has never raised his voice at me.  Once he looked angry at me, and that made me so sad.

Truth bombs away!

On the London Relocation blog (which I didn't check out initially thinking it was just ads for flats) there's another great post about the need for a new name for trailing spouses, and about the resentment that happens in that strange, topsy-turvy world:

Tackling the first issue is primarily psychological—mind over matter, as they say.  It’s not to say that your concerns aren’t legitimate and you shouldn’t assert your viewpoints to ensure your side is understood and that your spouse will similarly make concessions to maintain the balance of power in the relationship.  However, it’s also imperative to recognize when maybe your side is understood and your spouse will and does make concessions, in which case the problem may rest largely in your mind, so requires a shift in outlook.

I put this in big because it's really important. Now, there probably are horrid power imbalances in some relationships, but if you've got a good one now, you can probably have a good one when things get crazy.  In my case, this is true. I've got a feminist husband. He's worth like, 20,000 heads of cattle. And 10 Cadillacs. But do I get some resentment brewing my head about this? Oh, hell yeah. Luckily I spotted it before it was too late.  Thank you blog, ye olde time-suck and navel-gazing cure-all.