Is it anxiety or intuition?

 
My self-belief toggles between the extremes of garbage person on one side and delusions of grandeur on the other. So when I saw the posting for the job, the job I had at one point in my life coveted above all others, my initial thought was yeah right. Not gonna bother wasting the printer ink and finger calories typing the cover letter. Let the gig go to someone fancier than me, someone with a sash of medals and awards, someone more of the literary industrial complex. Then, several friends sent me the job posting, saying I should apply for it. To which I responded, “Thank you for thinking I’d have a snowball’s chance in Hades.”  
 
But then, one sun dappled morning in early September, when my caffeine and hormone levels reached that optimal and elusive balance, when the shaft of light was shining on my laptop in an auspicious manner, when the planets and celestial bodies were aligned just so, I thought: why not me?
 
Let me take a step back here and address what you’re thinking: it’s just a job, no biggie, why not just apply?  Here’s the thing: it’s not just a job—is it ever?—but a bundle of neuroses and significances knotted, unteased, and tied up again over the course of a dozen years. And also, with academic jobs, the cute thing they do is pre-select the candidate they are going to hire but then open up the job to all because, you know, laws.
 
The job was for a professorship in the genre of my heart (nonfiction) at my alma mater. The ivy league was never a foregone conclusion. To a middle-class kid with shitty grades and a piss poor attitude in high school, being accepted to such a place was the ultimate form of validation, and, as I would later tell the undergraduates of the school whom I would teach, first as a grad student then as an adjunct, the closest I ever could’ve gotten to the campus at their age would’ve been as a drug dealer. Receiving that acceptance letter was a stamp of approval, a middle finger to the gifted and talented program that rejected me in fourth grade, most of whose alumni are currently shilling leggings and skincare in MLMs on Facebook.
 
The light of the institution blinded me to the fact that they were charging me oodles of money neither me nor my family had to pursue a career that is about as lucrative and far less noble as a social worker. But who cared! They wanted me, I would take out loans and gladly fork it over! Now I was somebody.
 
I quickly learned that an institution will not save you, will not make you whole. I still had the same moral failings and petty grudges as before. I felt exploited for the classes I taught that paid a LOL amount with about the same number of dollar digits as the acronym itself, but I allowed myself to be exploited. I thought about the professor I asked for a letter of recommendation who declined because, he informed me, I wouldn’t get the fellowship (true story, though as someone who now writes far too many letters of rec I kinda get the impulse, though would never have the balls ((in his case quite shriveled)) to say so). I thought about the brand new syllabus for the class I have been contracted to teach this spring at the institution which I have now sent twice- TWICE!- with no response. I felt burned by the institution, but if I’m honest it’s a pleasant sadomasochistic kind of pain, like a sunburn after a long day at the beach, that first gives you the chills then gives way to a full body fever.  
 
But most of all, I have never been the kind of writer anointed by the establishment that is not exactly the institution itself but which the institution represents. I don’t write lyric essays, I’m not a trauma memoirist, I don’t write in crystalline prose—as you can see. As always, I was in but never of, close but no cigar. Even with two books under my belt I still didn’t feel qualified to apply to this job which required only one.
 
So, what to do? A part of me desperately wanted to apply because in my heart of hearts, I knew I would be good about it, at least the part that is purportedly a big part of the job—teaching. I thought about the things I’d tell the hiring committee were I to advance to the interview stage: I am a graduate of this program and I know how much every mortgaged dollar means to these students. I would make every minute in the classroom count.
 
I relayed this fantasy to a friend who is a professor at the capital I of the ivies, the one in Cambridge, daren’t speak its name. Her response: the institution doesn't care. It cares about names, publications, awards, accolades. My suspicion was confirmed. But, she later texted me, it’s like the Connecticut lottery motto: you can’t win if you don’t play.
 
But to play and be rejected would reinforce the bad stories I tell myself about myself, about not being enough. I have Stockholm syndrome from that place, I texted a friend. I know it is bad for me but I want it still. Or my ego does. I want to be able to tell people I teach full-time at the institution and have them look at me as if I am somebody. I want to be made Real, like Pinocchio going from wooden marionette to flesh and blood boy.
 
Back and forth like this, for days. It felt like selling myself short not to apply and like flirting with self-harm to do so.
 
This is the precise pickle of a problem I am trying to untangle  in my new project: how can I discern between anxiety and intuition? In this case, I am afraid of being rejected and riding the self-reinforcing narrative. Is that self-protection or self-defeating fear? Or, is applying just looking to fill a hole inside myself (inside of all of us) that is an abyss? The abyss of being human? Or, would I, could I get the job?! You can see the knots tying!
 
I ping ponged like this. Since I am working on developing my own intuition as part of my research, I meditated. I asked my guides (who I picture as kind of Muppet-y looking beneficent ancestors), I checked in with my body. I was about to text a brilliant psychic I’m profiling for the book and offer to pay for her counsel. But somehow, as I was researching the off the wall areas I’m exploring in this book-- synchronicity, the subconscious (what!)-- I got my answer: nah. Don’t let these futile exercises in feeling like a person distract you from the work you were put here to do (and are able to do because your husband has a job that is Real). Which is: ask people nosy questions and get all up in their business.
 
I felt a wave of relief and a sense of rightness, of correction. Neither are great words for what I felt but it just felt…. peaceful. I was reminded of a similar sensation I experienced when my editor cut a chapter in my first book I’d written about a true sociopath. Just a kind of full body thank you. I  skipped along the rest of the day and did the rest of my errands and sundry household tasks with levity, as if I had received a windfall I wasn’t expecting. It felt right.
 
And also: there are still two weeks left to apply.
 
Recommendations:
 
I spoke with Buzzfeed about relationships with people in prison.
 
Participating in a clinical study: I have my final blood draw today and the punchline is—Truman was born with COVID antibodies because I got vaccinated while I was pregnant. And he doesn’t have three eyes or anything (just two that slightly cross sometimes).
 
The most brilliant piece of dialogue ever televised. Succession could never.
 
This Oprah interview with Edward Enninful
 
Period podcast
 
Maca in my morning oatmeal
 
Three important books dropping this month that you should buy:
 
The Furrows by Namwali Serpell
 
The Rise of a New Left by Raina Lipsitz
 
Build for Tomorrow by Jason Feifer
 
Do you have an instance of being confyoozed between anxiety and intuition? If so, won’t you please tell me?