like a strand in the wind in the web that is my own...I begin again
So I've just been unofficially but most decisively informed that I haven't been selected for the PhD in Art and Visual Culture for next year. Yeah.
And suddenly the future isn't so much an uncertain, cloudy sorta thing that was largely outside my control - now it's a big rape-happy tentacle monster of options, all of which require decisive action pretty fucking now, and not too surprisingly, months of anticipating failure hasn't left me particularly well-prepared for dealing with that reality. The part of my brain that we can call the Aspirational Doctor of Art and Shininess keeps peering past those waving, sucking tentacles looking for the fat, juicy body of academic validation and is already hatching schemes to make the core of that tentacle monster her bitch come 2008. So now I have to tell the Doctor to shut the fuck up and brace herself for at least a year of taking whatever those slimy appendages of art are willing to offer and be prepared to beg for seconds.
At least I think the Doctor and I have agreed that Canada is the main priority once I bail out of this present ship. And yes, I am calling this public school gig quits - charming though they are, the kids are no substitute for working with dedicated art students, and I have no reason to believe that my teaching colleague here is not, in fact, a biomorphic automaton being remote-controlled via satellite by an inquisitive but largely indifferent squirrel. And working in an environment where something like that is valued is far more depressing than staring down the double barrel of unemployment and a homeless-nomadic existence.
So... time to make some shit happen.
And suddenly the future isn't so much an uncertain, cloudy sorta thing that was largely outside my control - now it's a big rape-happy tentacle monster of options, all of which require decisive action pretty fucking now, and not too surprisingly, months of anticipating failure hasn't left me particularly well-prepared for dealing with that reality. The part of my brain that we can call the Aspirational Doctor of Art and Shininess keeps peering past those waving, sucking tentacles looking for the fat, juicy body of academic validation and is already hatching schemes to make the core of that tentacle monster her bitch come 2008. So now I have to tell the Doctor to shut the fuck up and brace herself for at least a year of taking whatever those slimy appendages of art are willing to offer and be prepared to beg for seconds.
At least I think the Doctor and I have agreed that Canada is the main priority once I bail out of this present ship. And yes, I am calling this public school gig quits - charming though they are, the kids are no substitute for working with dedicated art students, and I have no reason to believe that my teaching colleague here is not, in fact, a biomorphic automaton being remote-controlled via satellite by an inquisitive but largely indifferent squirrel. And working in an environment where something like that is valued is far more depressing than staring down the double barrel of unemployment and a homeless-nomadic existence.
So... time to make some shit happen.