Back in Gainesville and Nose Back to Grindstone

Sorry folks, I've been out of town since Thursday attending a weekend conference up in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Talk about BFE! I had to drive an hour from the small airport just to get to the campus. One thing I now know for certain, I do not want to get a job anywhere that freaking small! It made Gainesville look like a booming metropolis. *shudder*

But the conference was super fun and I met some really great people doing interesting work. And I even had several academics come up to me at the end of the conference and personally thank me for all my supposedly "wonderful questions" during the panels. :) I guess I impressed them, yay! Unfortunately, my own paper was during an ass early morning session and we only had 2 people show up! It was kind of disappointing, but I did have a really engaging discussion with my fellow panelists, one of whom was also doing work on lesbian comics. So that was fruitful, but I was hoping for a little bit more outside feedback. Then again, I suppose I don't blame people. I wouldn't have gotten my ass out of bed to attend an 8am panel if I wasn't presenting either!

Okay, now let me say thanks to all my lovely peeps who offered their helpful suggestions and words of encouragement over my whole financial freak out last week. Many of your ideas were really good and your support made me feel a lot better. (Thanks for calling me Monkey! And I'm sorry I missed you Hungry Hippo--I'll call you tonight!)

Unfortunately, subletting isn't really an option for me (the apartment complex owner isn't cool with it and I have too much valuable shit--i.e. massive DVD & CD collections, books and tech stuff--I would have to pack it all up and pay to put it in storage while I sublet the place). I already applied for a couple of fellowships/grants for summer but didn't get any of them and I don't know of any others in my field that I could apply for--if you know any Martin, please give me a buzz!

I heard back from the local community college and they are going to call me tomorrow with a definite date for an interview. So if all goes well I should be able to get some adjunct work in summer B (July/August). In the meantime I think I can squeak by on what I have in the bank and my last two paychecks. *fingers crossed*

I'm trying to keep a pretty optimistic viewpoint at present. I don't like to get pessimistic and doom/gloomy about my circumstances. I'm much more about being proactive and productive, tackling the problem head on. But in this case my options are sort of limited. I mean, I could get a 40 hour/week job and solve my monetary problems, but then I'd never get any work on my dissertation done this summer and I wouldn't be ready to go on the job market--so I'd be back in the same cycle again. While I need to get by financially, my equally important priority is getting work done on my dissertation so I can look for jobs in the fall. So, I'm formulating a really tight budget and thinking about how to realistically make everything work.

While I'm being more positive-take-charge about the situation, I can't really alleviate the stress still churning around in my stomach on a pretty consistent basis, but I've managed to at least moderate my mental anxiety with assurances that everything will be fine. The best way to keep my mind off of my financial straits, thus, is to return to working on my dissertation. I need to get as much possible work done during summer A as I can. My nose is firmly back to the grindstone so I can wrap up this chapter I've been laboring over for weeks and get it to my Chair. Then I need to begin work on the next one because I'm presenting a short version of it at the NWSA conference in June. Now if only our bloody library would open! It's been undergoing renovation for 2 1/2 years. It was supposed to open in January, but I'm still waiting...