some of the time the future comes right 'round to haunt me

some of the time the future
comes round just to see
that all is as it should be
like it’s there to remind me
we’ve got to wait and see
-beth orton

I've officially been breaking the rule about posting regularly. I hate that but I feel like every time I blink, another week has gone by. I don't know where the time goes.

I should change my about paragraph in the sidebar because I've decided to hell with the Ph.D. My erratic, absentee advisor said I could finish up if I stayed another semester or even part of a semester, but there is no way in hell I can bear to stay longer. Not to mention that there is a very real chance that my advisor will have left before then. Not that she's told me anything. Seriously, she has issues.

The parallels between ending an unhappy, longstanding relationship and breaking up with grad school continue. I did some soul searching and agonizing and have wasted time fretting about wasted time (Why be in a relationship for 5 years when it's doomed? Why be stuck in the cold Midwest for 6 years if I'm just getting a Master's?) and I definitely stuck with both relationship longer than I should have, out of sheer stubbornness. But pretty early in my decision to stop in the program, I was eerily calm about it. It just felt right. And there's the same feeling of relief to be free of something that was just holding me back.

It's easy to shut myself up about wasted time because if my last relationship had ended sooner and/or I'd quit school sooner, I wouldn't have met a certain rather important person in my life and I'd never wish for that. Neither Husband to Be or I subscribe to the fatalistic "There's one person out there for you and if you don't meet them, you're screwed" philosophy and in theory, I'm sure we would have met other people and been just fine and dandy. In practice, though, I will say it's nearly impossible for me to imagine finding someone else who fits me so well.

So now the job search is on. After some dithering about where to move, HtB and I have decided it's California or bust. We'll narrow our job searches to there and worst case scenario, even if we don't have jobs, we'll still move. It may indeed be too expensive there and we'll move or we may love it and settle down or we may hop around before we find our spot. I'd prefer to put down roots and buy a house soon but we still have a few more pre-kid years and the freedom to hop around.

I figure I can go in one of two directions - publishing or relationship/dating services. Recently I've been looking at editorial assistant job ads. It's pretty low down on the ladder but I have no problem with that, because I have no job experience and I've gotta pay my dues. I have too much pride to be a coffee fetcher but I'll do everything else. I thank my stars on a regular basis that I have a friend in publishing who's been an invaluable source of advice. She was the grad student I worked for in college as a research assistant and wrote me an absolutely glowing recommendation letter for grad school. She got her Ph.D and then shifted from academia to a big shot job in publishing.

She bumped into one of my friends at a conference last summer and after all these years, remembered which university I was at and asked about me and now she's a huge help to me in my job search. I don't think is a coincidence, more like the confluence of fate and grace.

Everything is still up in the air but I'm just as excited as I am nervous.