Sliding Doors

I'm in suspense about my last job application and will be until mid December when I leave for Christmas vacation. The semester is hurtling towards a close and I can't wait for vacation and for the first term just to be finished. There may not be a second term for me.

I'm trying to define my own terms and conditions and there are some jobs in this country that I'm just no longer willing to do. Simply living in a foreign country is no longer my goal, I'd like a little more: a certain quality of life, the possibility of meeting a life partner and a semi-interesting job with reasonable working conditions in a field I'm interested in where I can use other communications skills besides just teaching.

I have not found these things in France despite investing 5 years of my life here. How much longer do you keep trying? 5 years seems like a good time to cut your losses and try something else if you still don't have what you want and haven't made any career or personal progress.

From talking to a friend struggling to accept the tragic loss of her boyfriend in a road accident 3 weeks ago, life is too short not to take opportunities (this was the logic by which I moved to France in the first place). But by that same token, it's also too short to spend long periods of it unhappy. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that things hadn't gone better for me here, but I also think that I tried my best and don't see what more I could have done.

I hope things will work out one way, but it's not up to me so I just have to wait for a hiring decision about a promising job I interviewed for which would probably make another year here worth it. If I don't get the job, it's a sign for me that it's time to leave rather than staying on in a bad situation. Nothing is good or bad, to paraphrase Shakespeare, it's just the way we interpret things to give our lives meaning.

As I wait for the job decision, I feel a little like I'm in the film Sliding Doors suspended between 2 alternate possibilie realities. If you remember, one was great and the other was terrible.