Existential Panic

I am a fool for not doing any grading. I am a fool for not setting up my evals, writing my final, or writing my final review sheet. The only item on my to-do list that I’ve done is “book haircut.” I look like Jeremiah Johnson. Ten years ago we watched that movie and we still sing the song my old man wrote to go along with the movie’s main theme music:

Jeremiah Johnson
went up into the mountains
and came back down a famous mountain man

Oh Jeremiah Johnson
Oh Jeremiah Johnson
Oh Jeremiah Johnson
Oh Jeremiah Johnson

I can feel myself sliding into this dark place I go to whenever a big life change happens. I know it’s happening and I know it’s all in my head, and I have advised other people on this very issue countless times, but I also feel sort of helpless in the face of it. It happened when we moved to Santa Cruz to start a new life and I cried in a motel in Redding and felt like I didn’t know who I was anymore and nothing would ever make sense again. It happened when I moved to LA by myself to go to grad school and immediately got giardia and had to househunt in the billion degree heat while barfing in my car and when I finally moved into my apartment–a moment that should have been a huge relief–I lay down on the floor and sobbed on the phone with my mom while she tried to cheer me up by telling me about how nice a nice rug can make a place feel. It happened a couple weeks before my wedding where I had a total melt down on the phone with Steve and cried so hard and yelled things like EVERYONE’S GONNA HATE ME and just completely left my body in this tidal wave of anxiety. I can feel it starting again now and I am trying to intellectually deal with it before it gets too bad and before I make any regrettable phone calls.

This feeling that you’re making a huge mistake and everything will be ruined and what if you can’t find a place to live and what if you truly aren’t good at teaching at a giant university and you lose your calling, and you’re all alone in a new place where you don’t know anybody and everybody you love is LITERALLY as far away as they can be while still being in America.

My old man and my dog provide a degree of stability that is not to be scoffed at but I think just existentially, big changes are difficult. Not just for me, for everybody. And I’m somebody who’s pretty open to change! I’ve done all sorts of weird things. Moving to a place I’d never even visited. Going to grad school and living apart from my old man for years. I went and lived in stupid Iowa for 3 years and didn’t have a job or anything! Actually leaving Iowa was the one time I went through a big life change without crying. Which tells you something about Iowa.

Also I think the perception of permanence inherent in a TT job is weirdly part of what’s stressing me out, which is hugely counter-intuitive. I’ve been so impermanent in my career for so long, and it’s been so awful and draining. Almost everyone in an adjunct situation dreams of a TT job, it’s what you’re working toward constantly, it’s the ultimate goal you have in front of you for the 6 years of grad school and then for however long you’re piecing together a livelihood out of part-time gigs. You long for that stability, that dependable salary, the ability to set down roots that a TT job makes possible. I’ve been putting off so many things I want and want to do until I get a TT job! P.s. for example how crazy is it to think that I used to say “I’ll have a kid when I get a TT job,” then during the years of not getting a TT job I kind of just decided having a kid didn’t sound that great after all. Imagine how different my life would have been if I had been a more competent job candidate!!! Maybe that is a way to play the glad game?…..OR THE SAD GAME??? I literally won’t know until I’m old and it’s too late. Which will be in like 3 years.

But anyway at the same time, it’s sort of liberating to have impermanent teaching gigs. It means that if there are problems you have with your institution or your students, you can kind of shrug and be like, whatever, I’m not going to be here for long. Now as semi-permanent employment (if I’m lucky! I realize) looms it’s like, what if I don’t like it there? What if this crazy class I’m being hired to teach every semester for the rest of my life doesn’t work for me? What if I hate my office? What if what if?

I know it’s dumb and really only one layer of what I’m feeling–other layers are joy and excitement and relief and deep gratitude, of course. You can’t imagine what the job market is like, how shredding it is to apply for jobs along with HUNDREDS of other qualified people and not get them and not get them and not get them. To finally get one is huge. It’s validating and thrilling. Duh! I’m just saying, although I’m a high-strung person, I don’t often have existential panics, but in this kind of scenario, I totally do, and I need to be aware that that’s happening and try not to call anybody on the phone while sobbing which seems to be my MO.

I think big life transitions actually are these moments where you come a bit closer to understanding that you’re going to die. They let you feel change and time passing, whereas when you’re in the same place/same job/same life for years you can let time wash over you a bit more easily. With a transition like getting a real job and moving to a new city you are forced to wonder, is this it? Am I here until I die? Oh god, 30 years ago I was a small child and now look at me, what have I done, etc. Getting married felt similar but in a good way, weirdly.

Anyway

It’s bonkers spring weather here so I am afraid to go outside because it’s 70 degrees and beautiful now but in 3 minutes it will be a torrential downpour probably.

My parents are in town for a few months and they just did a no-call stop-by on me. I didn’t know they were here until I heard our trash bins rattling and looked outside and saw my dad hauling them from the curb back behind the house. When I opened the door my mom was holding an armload of tupperware full of food they wanted me to have. I immediately started yelling at them about how scared I am to move away and start a new life and as usual they were immediately comforting and supportive (à la when my mom talked me down by getting me to focus on the cute rug I would buy, back on that horrible day in Santa Monica) and I felt better. My parents are nice. They are giving us their car. My mom wants to take me to J Crew to buy pants. Ok everything is going to be ok.

What one should obviously do at this point is go to the gym