Purgatory?

Limbo? Intermediate state? Don't know if any of those captures list-building, or waiting to hear back on a job.

For three months or so now I've endured the seemingly never-ending process of creating and structuring a list that will then shape my dissertation, adding to it, submitting it to advisors, editing it per their suggestions, and repeating. Endlessly. Like seven times. Here's where linking it to the idea of purgatory works...while I started with sort of a generally fuzzy topic of what I might possibly think about sort of writing on, I now have a nice tidy topic, with a descriptive list that relates to it, and appropriate criticism. The dross has been officially refined out. I'm left with just the good stuff. And as of yesterday, my advisor thinks so too. HOORAY!

But the process still isn't done. I now have to submit it to committee members and go through the same thing again with them as well. It really never ends.

On top of this prolonged process, we're still waiting to hear if Ben has a job with Miami's IT services department. If he does, we'll be leaving here and moving home! Their Spanish department wants me as an instructor starting in January...they've offered me teaching classes of majors and minors, plus the potential for starting a theater production class. I'm thinking that this, plus the fact that we'd get to be real people with a real house and real jobs with real benefits would be a nice change from teaching the terminal GE requirement as a student whose little family is bursting out of our apartment. But we have to wait. Still. Some more. Until the folks reviewing Ben's application decide to give him a yea or nay.

Being in the middle is frustrating to me, because I like to progress. But I have to remind myself that life IS the middle. I just have to come to terms with it.