Trying not to stress out.

I've really been trying not to stress out about the academic job market lately.

Two strategies I've had:

1) I tell myself that at the end of the day, I enjoy what I do, so to remind myself not to think of upcoming deadlines or the impossible professionalization expectations that I face from faculty, but rather focus on what I'm doing, and relish it.

The other day I had to read through 3-4 hours worth of material on Mormon fundamentalist polygamists, so I told myself, "Smile, you are lucky to do this."

And it was fun!

2) Every once in a while I remind myself of what a friend from home had told me, how it's so cool that I'm at school studying what I love. 

"It's tough, but you're living the dream," she was like.  "The rest of us are already in a grind and envy you."

She meant it, too - and she has a bad-ass job working for a progressive Native American tribe to help them develop alternative energy as part of their tribal ethos to 'plan ahead for the next 7 generations'.