20190413.0430

I have noted more than once (yesterday, for example) that I am not eager to return to the job market. I do not relish the thought of being out of full-time, continuing work again; I was in that position from 2013 through 2017, and those were not good times for me or for those I care about. I figure that, if I were back on the job market, I'd be the kind of person again that I was then, and I do not want to go back to being him. I do not want to do that to my family; once was more than enough. But I cannot afford to let myself be blind to the possibility that I might have to do it at least one more time, for which reason I have been working on some of the things I've been working on this past days. I have the hopes that the small adjustments I've been making along the way, results of experience in jobs and looking for them, will make any job-hunt time to come a bit easier for me to handle.
Further, while I am working against cockiness in it, I do think I'll have an easier time of a job search the next time I have to do it, not only because I am making the adjustments I have been making, but because I have recent work history in "real" jobs, now. It will not be long before I have two years with my current employer, a year in my current position, and another promotion in hand; yes, the circumstances that allow it are unusual, and I acknowledge that I may not get the expected boost up, but I have been given every indication short of the new contract that it will be so. And that makes a difference; I am less apt to have to face the kinds of questions I have previously, about why someone with my credentials would want a given job, or how my experience putatively outside the "real" world suits me to a particular job. (Yes, I'll still have to answer how I fit the position, but there's a difference between "How do you fit this position?" and "How do you fit this position?")
It is a thing I have written about elsewhere, the perceived mismatch between town and gown, the thought that Shaw is right and that those of us who have spent time at the front of the classroom cannot succeed outside of it--so why bother letting us try? I have also written to try to address that issue, though I do not know that it has been of any moment, and I have to doubt that it has. But I am likely to be in a position to hire people; I expect to need to replace myself as I succeed my current supervisor. And I will keep in mind my own experiences when I do so; I will look especially for those who are now in positions like I was before, because I know what they can do when they finally do not have to worry so much about whether there will be work tomorrow.
But they, and I, will always, always have to worry. And it will likely get worse as things go on...