You're not breaking up with me, I'm breaking up with YOU

After several days of the VSD (Vague Sense of Doom) having lifted, and a bit more spring in my step, as if my mojo were starting to come back, the VSD is back today. Why? Oh yeah, I sent off an academic job application today. Oops. If I were a drug addict, I would call it a relapse. I'm an academia addict. "Maybe it'll work this time?" I tell myself, as I send out the application (get high). Oh and an article I submitted came back "revise and resubmit" today.  And I also got my first rejection letter of the season, a smug little memo that ended with "We're sorry we don't have better news for you today." Well let me try to pull myself together so I don't spend all night crying into my pillow. (<-Sarcasm) Let's remember here who broke up with who. (Oh wait, that should be "who broke up with whom" shouldn't it? Man, this academic habit is hard to kick.) But academia is trying to get the last word of course. That bitch.

It's such a slippery slope. I have a spreadsheet with all the deadlines and jobs in it, and a deadline was looming for a job that I thought sounded great for me. "That sounds just like me!" I tell myself as I read it, and the old sense of hope/doom starts to come back.

It's like the narcissistic freakazoid I dated earlier this year (who was an academic by the way, see a pattern?). After we broke up, I would start to gradually feel better, but then in a moment of weakness I'd text or email hir and the VSD would rush back in. One time ze actually picked up when I called! That was the worst: VSD for weeks. Somehow I would forget all about how miserable that lunatic made me. "Maybe it could work after all. Maybe ze isn't actually a sociopath like I thought or like everyone else has told me??"

It happened because I forgot for a brief moment how truly miserable I'd been, just like with me and academia. I broke it off when I rejected the search committee, but came sniffing back around thinking "maybe this time it will work and I'll live happily ever after." No wonder the VSD came back.

Well just as a reminder, academia, you didn't break up with me. I broke up with you.