on life, recently (#2)

In August, I am informed that I am (likely to be) a capital-A, capital-E Affected Employee,

i.e. you are implicated in the latest of successive cuts to public service workforces,

i.e. it's not you (I promise, you have been a very competent worker), it's me (it's a Tight Fiscal Environment for us, at the moment, you see),

i.e. I'm not saying you're being made redundant, just that some people will be, and we're making you jump through hoops giving you options, so you can decide what might suit your personal circumstances best, to sort that who those people will be amongst yourselves.

so I go through all the stages of maybe-grief for the job I am maybe-losing,

even though by August I am only two months away from a year of leave anyway, as the countdown app on my phone — which I set up in January — keeps reminding me,

even though I am self-aware enough to know that I am professionally well-equipped to find myself other gigs, and both mortgage-less and dependent-less enough to weather an economic dry spell far better than many colleagues,

even though the job is one that has regularly left me feeling bitter, exhausted, bereft, exploited, anyway.

My friends counsel me through my existential crisis. I meet some fellow public servants at a conference, First Nations women, far more senior + further into their careers than I am. With their advice, I start to feel at peace with the prospect of walking away, precisely so that I can return again — to the public service career I've become so emotionally attached to; my calling, as they say — when the time comes. I take up the option to apply for a package, a cute little pay-out (from intern to redundant in just four years, what a joke).

In November, they deny my application. I sit at a public library and write this, instead of the 500 words they need from me, so that they can consider me for the job I have already been doing for more than a year.

Here's what they don't tell you about being a full-time PhD student:

• It's just imposter syndrome, particularly when you've been a part-time researcher thus far, because all the folks you started this degree with now seem to be careening towards a finish line, and even though you are quite literally operating along a different timeline, you can't help but measure progress in self-flagellating ways. (It's also just knowing that nobody is actually careening towards a finish line, only stumbling — crawling — taking a u-turn — being forced to back track).

• It's just waking up every day and sitting at your silly desk and typing silly words to describe how you will collect silly data, whilst you wait for the right people to give you permission to actually go out and collect the aforementioned silly data

• It's just having so much and yet so little time to simply be curious; unravel a stray thought and see where it takes you; seek out answers to questions that really only lead to more questions

• It's just lying about the ethical risks of the research to yourself, as the researcher, to get through the academy's bureaucratic processes more quickly, because the academy's yardsticks for ethical research are flawed anyway, because the academy itself is so deeply flawed (violent) (complicit in Zionist and other colonial regimes, #freepalestine)

• It's just questioning the hubris that the University indoctrinates in you: that having a Doctor in front of your name will make you worthy; that your research, particularly when it is novel and community-engaged and practice-oriented, will Have An Impact (as if more than, say, five people will read the 100,000 word document); that the outcomes will be worth the often extractive process

• It's just finding unexpected moments of affirmation in kind messages from strangers, my colleague was at your presentation and we had a great conversation about how we can do things differently, thank you for what you do