Restless

I’m not sure what it is, but I always start feeling restless after the Holidays.  Christmas and New Years are built up for so long and it’s a celebration with family, friends, food, booze, vacation time, and then before you know it January arrives and it’s back to the mundane. At first I thought this was just a personal feeling, but start polling some of my peers, and I feel like we are all in somewhat of a post holiday funk. Some of us are feeling like we are in quarter life crisis mode, others bored with jobs, or frustrated with relationships that aren’t going anywhere. For me personally, I think this is largely related to the fact that I put my final application for Graduate School in the mail on Saturday morning.

 I thought it would be a freeing feeling and suddenly all this pressure would be lifted, I’d have more free time, less worries, no more pressing deadlines and worrying about personal statements TA applications, writing samples etc. But let me tell you, the relief was short lived, and I am now finding myself in an angst ridden holding pattern.

My last application getting ready to be mailed.

For the past five months a good portion of my daily life was directed towards the goal of applying to graduate school. There were the countless hours spent studying for the GRE, researching schools, reading about programs, studying faculty, scheduling meetings with trusted advisors, tracking down letters of recommendation, making calendars… it seemed like I was hurtling towards deadlines at groundbreaking speed. And now here I am, all applications complete, transcripts submitted and all I can do is play the waiting game.

As a society in general we are somewhat fixated on instant gratification. We know what we want, and damn it we want it right now. It seems like for a nominal fee you can have almost anything delivered to your doorstep overnight. You can own things with the click of a button, one hour photo, digital cameras, e-mail, downloadable books. We are trained that sooner is better than later, and in turn we are not always a very patient society.  Now I have always been one to believe that good things come to those who wait… and waiting I am, and it is driving me crazy.

I feel like I’m at the crucial part of a choose your own adventure book, only I have no idea which path I’m going down. It’s more like I’m waiting for the adventure to choose me, waiting to figure out what I’m going to be doing with the next year of my life.

I held on to some of my applications for a while. They were all turned in long before their assigned deadlines, but I had manila envelopes full of complete applications, addressed and ready to go sitting in my living room for weeks. I knew the second I put them in the mail that I would lose control of the application process. The second they entered the custody of the US Postal service I would be surrendering what little control over the process I had, and would be at the mercy of those 5 selection committees. At least when the envelopes sat in my apartment I knew I could still tweak and edit them as I saw fit. And now there is nothing to tweak, nothing to edit, nothing to check. Nothing to do but wait.

And it’s the waiting, combined with the seasonal restlessness that is driving me crazy. I’m trying to get lost in a good book, or knitting project, copious amounts of yoga, eating healthy, cocktails, anything to distract me from the fact that it’s been six weeks since I turned in my first application. But thus far, I haven’t quite figured out what that perfect distraction is. I can’t seem to get into any of the books in my ever growing pile of “things to read when you are done with grad school applications and actually have time to read” I’m bored with my knitting, and since I live alone, I’m trying not to rely too heavily on the cocktails… Though I will admit in the past few weeks I have become rather smitten with Bloody Mary’s. Winter TV is never very entertaining, and pitchers and catchers don’t even report to spring training for another 38 days.  What’s a girl have to do these days to find a good distraction?

The celebratory bloody mary I drank moments after completeing the last application

I’ve never really been the type of person who is passive when it comes to my own life. I see something I want, I go after it (in my own timing of course) and that is usually that. So this whole waiting thing is not exactly my idea of a good time.  And I am a planner, which naturally doesn’t help the situation. I’m not a planner in the “in ten years I want to be married with two kids and a house” type of way but more in the “these are the vacation days I’m going to be taking for the summer” way. This proves to be incredibly problematic when you have no idea where you are going to be living seven months from now. Am I going to be gearing up for the busiest month in wedding season, or am I going to be training my replacement? Am I going to be downsizing and trying to figure out how what the hell to do with my collection of books, or am I going to be worrying about event bookings? Class schedules or scheduling time off?

I guess in the meantime I will continue to try to distract myself….