The Two-Body Problem - Part 3- Making the best of it and taking control

To make a long story short, a full year went by, with little success on the soft-money front. Hub wrote several grants, large and small, and we even wrote one together. All came back with decent reviews, but didn't quite make the cut. He continued to work on publishing papers and got two under review, he went to a conference, and that was just generally the life we settled into. He managed to hook up with some other folks on campus and "consult out" some of his survey technique skills and experience with social data, which resulted in the equivalent of 3 months of salary. (he did the work in October, and got his first check in mid January, but that is an entirely different story of incompetence and idiocracy at it's best).

All in all, it wasn't that bad, but it also wasn't that great. He was stretching his skills to participate in projects that had cash associated with them, he was hanging out in the attic, and coming upon road block after road block with the logistics of his appointment/position/etc. After 12 months it was getting really old. His "appointment" had no legitimacy with it and ultimately, he was just some guy they let hang out in the attic. After a year, it was time to re-evaluate. But, we weren't entirely sure what to do. No place was hiring, and we had spend all those years in school to get the PhD, so it seemed a shame to waste it. We were kind of at an impasse on Hub's career path.

I'm not going to lie to you, and I'm not going to belabor the point, but the situation was starting to put a strain on our marriage and our lives in general. The number of emotions and stress wrapped up in the situation was high, and it was starting to take a toll. The lack of stability really starts to weigh on you after a while. We pressed on, but both of us knew that the situation wasn't sustainable, and that something had to change. So, at the start of the school year, we decided that we would selectively pursue other opportunities that came available. What that meant in practical terms was that we both were keeping an eye on the job boards, and specifically, hub would expand his job search nationally, and we would consider all options. We were going to take control of the situation and do our best to change it (for the better).

Meanwhile...on the TT ride, I was on a really long downhill slide.