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I'm going to give myself one sad thread about job market stuff before moving on to fresh applications. Here goes:
I've had three cycles of applications (academic and elsewhere) in the last two years, putting hundreds of hours into it while maintaining professional development at my jobs, & still haven't gotten something full time. The hardest part is the mental hangover after it's all done.
Hours & hours of reflection and writing, distilling your strengths, tapping your references, all to communicate who you are & what you can be. You work to imagine your future self. And when nothing takes, that future self fades and its basis crumbles. You're where you are again.
And coming back to applying for jobs again, starting up that process, you return to the challenge of defining yourself clearly on the page. But with the additional challenge that your self-image is undermined.
Why should I celebrate my successes as a teacher and writer, put draining effort into narrating it, when it doesn't seem to matter?
I'm describing this specific experience, less to vent, and more because I imagine a lot of very talented, hardworking, and underpaid people are in a similar position.
For all those people, I wish for you to find the clarity to see/communicate your strengths as they are, and to not align your value with how employers choose to value you.
You always have two ways to improve things: improving by and for yourself through professional development, and improving by and with others by organizing with people in a similar boat. Things don't need to be run the way they are.
