We have five get-out-of-limbo plans, and when we can take action on one of them, well, I’m going to enter that new step in life a different person than I was when I thought I knew exactly what path I was meant to walk. I’ve let go of the heavy bits, the things that weigh me down. I’ve learned to help things grow, and learned that when I fail in that endeavor, it is not the end of the world. I learned to write for me again, instead of chasing bylines. I’ve been able to honor parts of myself that like to make things without feeling like they need to necessarily be “good.” I’ve made concrete things, reclaimed old hobbies I’d neglected. I have had the time to step back and dream new dreams, consider myself as a whole self, instead of just focusing on pursuing the path I imagined. The longer I’ve been in this space, the more able I have become at separating the things I wanted (and still do want), from the things I need. When I am most tired of limbo, I think it is because I am most aware that the longer I choose this, the longer I hold people with me in this space, the longer I make other people repeat the same years over and over again.Īnd yet, as I come through this application season again, I have realized that I am not the same person I was when I first started trying, when I first entered this particular limbo. How many times can one repeat the apologetic requests to referees, or let go of the feeling that when it takes so many other people’s efforts for you to try to pursue something, every time it doesn’t work out you’re not just wasting your own time and energy, but that of the people who support you? Academia is, to some people very solitary work, but in the application cycles, we can become acutely aware of how we are dependent on communities large and small, and how we are part of systems and networks though we may often work alone. I feel it constantly, even as I feel slightly numbed to it. Trying and applying over and over again, receiving rejections over and over again can become a heavy weight. I think it is human nature to keep trying, for better or for worse. But at the same time, when you have worked for years towards a certain goal, it is hard to stop trying and hoping that, well, maybe this time, this application cycle, this attempt at a grant, something might turn out differently. I hate feeling like I’ve relived the same year three times, and like I’m just waiting for my life to begin.įamously, Einstein is meant to have commented on how it is illogical to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. It is the ever-present itch in one’s feet to just meet the road at the door and start walking, to move on, hopefully forward, but even just laterally into a new way of being for a little while in order to see what might yet come.
It is the constant presence of the weight of waiting for opportunities or information to make decisions about where life will take us.
I remember when limbo was a party game that involved music and passing under a stick.
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