I don't want to be having these conversations. I don't want to be here. I've done everything I had to do, everything else is optional, and I want to go home, right now. Not Monday morning. But my flight is not right now.
I'm going to go hide with a book.
Hm. It sounds to me like the conversation you most need to have (maybe have already had) is with yourself. Listen to your own voice.
Life is too short, too fragile, to have to live in a place or state of mind that makes you uncomfortable and unhappy. More than ever, I think, it matters during a PhD, which will be an incredibly stressful (though transformative and occasionally wonderful) challenge.
You will find a way to do the next year and make the funding work. You are devastatingly competent and also clever. There is a way. You will figure this out.
It’s okay to rule out the obvious option if it is obviously going to make you unhappy. Make up your own solution. Stay happy and sane.
{{hugs}}
Thanks, Naomi. I talked a little with Kevin last night, and I’ve mostly decided that if I don’t just stay here, it doesn’t make any real sense for me to go back to Utah. It would only be for a year, which is a huge hassle for someplace I don’t want to be. I’d rather live in Madison or one of the outlying Bay Area towns — the affordable, boring ones — and work some, rather than have to live in Salt Lake and work less. I feel calmer, knowing that.
And, keep in mind MA, that most natives of Utah haven’t the first clue about what the rest of the world is like. So, it’s very easy for them to be happy here. They honestly don’t know any better. Well, that and you’ve seen the propaganda machine. 😉
I run into this all the time. Don’t worry. You got out, you stay out! Bully for you. You don’t have to let this black hole exert any more of its pull on you, or change your course in any way. Promise.
C