Hi Mae

I’m sorry to hear about your struggles.

The reason your boyfriend stated sound like a cop out. I can’t imagine why anyone would leave over their partner taking their medication? I don’t really understand the reading deadlines either. It sucks, but it sounds like you dodged a bullet with that one.

It’s awful that you were rejected from your PhD program and are experiencing difficulty gaining employment in your field. I’m not sure what the field is or how many job are available in that area.

Job hunting does suck though. It took me a year to get a suitable entry level job. I’ve even seen experienced people have similar difficulties. Certain industries are being hit hard at the moment.

I found it really depressing how many candidates were applying for each role. Applying felt like a lottery ticket with a small chance of getting a job at the end. Targeting my resume to roles helped. Some only needed small changes. I also volunteered to gain relevant work experience related to my field.

Are you getting any interviews as a result of your applications? If you are it’s a good sign. If you’re not there might be issues with your resume.

You’ve been through so much in the past year! I hope that things change for you and something good comes your way soon. Hang in there! Unfortunately, job hunting is a numbers game.

How are you feeling emotionally? And how are you coping with your limited budget? I hope you’re getting enough to eat and such.

Wishing you all the best! 🙏

Hi Mai

Quite the year you are having

In a single year I was dumped, lost connection to my community, the markets crashed, lost my job and no one was hiring. Nothing made sense. The world as I thought and assumed it ought to be was not.  (The question behind the hero’s journey – how will you respond to Life as it Is. Yes? No? – Whoever has eyes, let them see – notice how much of the Journey is about learning to see Life as it is and not as we are….)

I wonder if at some point in life everyone faces such disruption in their lives. Not that knowing that lessens the anxiety, fear, disappointment, disillusionment, frustration, anger, existential angst… a person in that situation experiences.

Turns out existential angst was the one that caused me the greatest distress as I felt forced to question everything. Yet in a way it also proved to be a path out as it forced me ‘down’ where I had to feel and take responsibility for what I believed, felt, and thought. A difference in knowing a definition and ‘knowing’ the experience. Indifference was not an option.

As Phillip Simmons put it ‘Learning to Fall – The Blessings of an Imperfect Life’ It seems the way out isn’t up but down. Both Buddhism and Christianity (kenosis) have the notion of self-emptiness as a path to discover the Self in such moments. A kind of falling upwards, not for the faint of heart as it involves a lot of “dying.”

Something more practical… The two steps I took that year that kept me moving forward was finding a therapist to talk with and taking up ballroom dancing. You can learn a lot about yourself in dance class. A instructor once told me that dancing was a or of falling and catching yourself. (Just reminded myself of a book I read back then – The Art of Falling – by Kathryn Craft (lyrical portrayal of a young woman trying to come to terms with her body and the artistic world that has repeatedly rejected her. The Art of Falling expresses the beauty of movement, the stasis of despair, and the unlimited possibilities that come with a new beginning.)

Something by Phillip Simmons to leave you with (google – learningtofall excerpt – for the full chapter.)
“Think again of falling as a figure of speech. We fall on our faces, we fall for a joke, we fall for someone, we fall in love. In each of these falls, what do we fall away from? We fall from ego, we fall from our carefully constructed identities, our reputations, our precious selves. We fall from ambition, we fall from grasping, we fall, at least temporarily, from reason. And what do we fall into? We fall into passion, into terror, into unreasoning joy. We fall into humility, into compassion, into emptiness, into oneness with forces larger than ourselves, into oneness with others whom we realize are likewise falling. We fall, at last, into the presence of the sacred, into godliness, into mystery, into our better, diviner natures…

I would rather, at least for now, find victory in the falling itself, in learning how to live fully, consciously in the presence of mystery. When we learn to fall we learn to accept the vulnerability that is our human endowment, the cost of walking upright on the earth.

In the northern part of our town there’s a stream that comes down out of the mountains, and at one place that we call the Pothole it makes a pool of emerald clear water ten feet deep. Every summer from my boyhood until quite recently I would climb the rocks high above that pool and fling my body into the air. A summer was not complete without the thrill of that rushing descent, the slap of the water, the shock of its icy embrace. I have a photograph, taken two years ago, of what would prove to be my last such jump. In the foreground, seen from the back, my wife stands waist deep in water, shading her eyes with one hand, watching. She has never approved of this ritual, something most grown men leave behind with their teenage years, but there I am, half way down, pale against the dark rocks that I rush past. You can see my wet footprints on the rock over my head that I’ve just left. My eyes are focused downward on the water rushing toward my feet, and I am happy, terrified, alive.

We are all—all of us—falling. We are all, now, this moment, in the midst of that descent, fallen from heights that may now seem only a dimly remembered dream, falling toward a depth we can only imagine, glimpsed beneath the water’s surface shimmer. And so let us pray that if we are falling from grace, dear God let us also fall with grace, to grace. If we are falling toward pain and weakness, let us also fall toward sweetness and strength. If we are falling toward death, let us also fall toward life.” — Philip Simmons, Learning to Fall

Hi Mae

It’s good to hear that you have practical solutions for your difficulties.

Feeling numb and moments of sadness make sense considering the traumas that you’ve experienced this year. Some people don’t think of things like relationships ending, being out of work etc as trauma but they actually are considered such in psychology. It takes time to process and heal.

It’s good to hear that most of the time you are about 5 on the happiness scale. I hope every day gets a little easier.

Keep plugging away, it’s just a matter of time and numbers. You’ll get there!