Life, as it is

April 15th has come and gone. I have yet to hear back from University of New England Place or University of Northern State, despite having sent emails to the respective admissions coordinators inquiring about the status of my application. I am still in purgatory.

But I've more or less come to terms now with the idea that I won't be attending graduate school this fall. In the ultimate scheme of things, this isn't as much of A Huge Setback as I'd like to think, and I understand that. In a way, I feel better now, knowing I've been rejected everywhere, than I did throughout February and March, unable to take any specific direction or make any concrete plans with so many unknowns to factor in to decisions.

Still, I don't relish the thought of the next 12 months, of another summer spent trying to make solid contacts with potential advisers, of another autumn spent filling out application form after application form, of another winter fretting over whether or not I'll be accepted somewhere. And I'm certainly not looking forward to that infamous and nearly impossible task: Finding a Good, Career-Relevant Job.

I loathe job-hunting. It's time-consuming. It's tedious. It's disheartening. For every 10 applications I fill out, I might, just maybe, if I'm very lucky, hear back about one. And no, I don't mean "get an interview for one," just hear back about one, usually, "we regret to inform you that..."

"We regret to inform you..." has been the headliner in a lot of my emails lately. I'd really love to read "We're pleased to inform you..." or even, "Congratulations!"

Most of my job-hunting has centered around government factions, including the USFS, the USGS, and the USFWS. When state-government jobs pop up, I'll occasionally apply for one. I have no qualms about independent agencies, and I'd be more than happy to work for a non-profit or one of the big conservation organizations.

Most of the ecology-related jobs out there, however, are temporary, seasonal positions, summer fieldwork meant to occupy an undergraduate's time between semesters. There don't seem to be a lot of positions suited for a graduated-last-year-and-didn't-get-into-grad-school-and-desperately-need-work-to-beef-my-credentials-for-next-year's-application-season-and-wanting-a-good-field-job-that-will-carry-me-through-the-year-but-not-looking-for-anything-long-term candidate. Which is, in part, where all the federal positions come in, because many of them are listed as "term positions not to exceed 13 months."

Perfect!

Now if I could only get one....

For the first time in my life, I don't really have anything to look forward to. I'm not excited for the summer, because I don't have a job or interesting fieldwork lined up. I'm not excited for autumn, because I probably won't be going back to school, which means I'll be working. I don't have any exciting trips planned or projects to work on or exciting new opportunities looming on the horizon. I feel a little stuck. And though I'll probably look back on this time in my life and recall this uncertainty and unhappiness only vaguely, right now August of 2011 seems very far away.

So my goal lately has been this: Accept life as it is, and try to enjoy the good parts about it, whenever you can. Part of this involves learning to live more in the present instead of constantly thinking about the future. I've always had a tendency to look as far ahead as possible, to plan out bits and pieces of my coming life, even if they're months or even years away. I'm trying to see this as an opportunity to focus more on the day-to-day aspects of my life, and to keep my aspirations for the future intact while letting my plans go.

A few weeks ago this song popped up on my Pandora station. It's called, "Life is a Song," by Patrick Park. I'd never heard it before, but it really stuck with me, so I downloaded it from iTunes and burned it on a mix CD that I've been playing in my car. It's become the soundtrack to this period of my life, and I've been trying to really listen to it, particularly the last stanza,

"And we build our house of cards/
And then we wait for it to fall/
And always forget how strange it is/
Just to be alive at all."

You can listen to the entire song, if you want:

A few days ago, I was browsing through various graduate-school related blogs, and chanced across a post written by gigirose about non-attachment, or the idea that higher states of consciousness can only be achieved when we're unconcerned about what something looks like or how it's supposed to go. As part of this post she included the following video, a short animation developed from the recordings of British philosopher Alan Watts. I watched the video and it struck something in me. I've watched it several times since then, and I think you should watch it, too. It very simply expresses a common principle of modern society, and suggests an alternative way to view our lives that I'm going to try, in the coming weeks, to emulate.