Esperando. . .no sé

I suppose I ought to say something since I haven’t posted in a while, but I’m not sure what to say. I’m happy to be home. I’m happy to have left Mexico before this swine-flu media mess made the border crossing potentially stickier. I’m happy to be back among so many friends.

There are worries here, of course. At the moment, we’re both unemployed. I’m looking for work and doing some of that research that I didn’t have time to do while I was getting my MA. Meanwhile, my husband is studying to take the state Bar Exam at the end of July and feeling out work opportunities. It’s funny—since we’ve gotten back several people have told us what a lousy economy we’re coming back to, and what a difficult time this is to be looking for work. Ha. They have no idea. I want to tell them how awful things are in small Mexican resort towns where the economy depends almost solely on tourism, how relatively safe things are in a diversified employment market with minimum wage laws. I’m not saying the job market is great here, because it isn’t, but it’s a far cry better than Peñasco.

I feel a little like my life is in a hover pattern right now, and I’m not quite sure what’s next. Work, hopefully. Health insurance and access to a prescription for anti-depressants, hopefully. I’m still hovering on the edge of starting a couple of books, but at the moment I’m focusing instead on some research proposals and getting started with the research itself because those things are more concrete and less difficult to articulate than some of the other ideas knocking around in my head. I can be an very, very organized person, but sometimes it’s hard for me to bring my ideas down out of the ether and organize them into something coherent and readable. Of course, I don’t want to discuss any of my ideas in such a public forum because I’m completely paranoid about being plagiarized, or just plain robbed of my ideas before I’m able to pounce on getting them published.

I’ve spent most of the day gathering information to apply for a big scholarship. It would cover my research expenses, including travel, for nearly a year. Competitive, of course, and the application process is unbelievably long and complicated. Cross your fingers for me. If I get this, I can walk into just about any PhD program i choose when the research is done. That's what they tell me, anyway.

I’m still feeling a little lost, but at least the fog is clearing.