Welcome

Why “The Holding Pattern?” The simple answer is because I am in a holding pattern. My pattern has multiple causations. I am a newlywed living in Georgia, in the middle of nowhere (it literally takes two dirt roads to find my house) on a lake. It’s a holiday house provided to us by my husband’s family, who also lives in the same area and who I’m getting to know slowly. I’m originally from the North and find myself a stranger in a strange land, a strange land where people eat mayonnaise salad and wear overalls in public. They are also overwhelmingly friendly and speak with cute accents.

We decided to follow our own path and marry, even though at the time of the decision we were students, had no money, lived abroad, and generally had no plan. Upon returning to America we married in a wedding planned from Europe, honeymooned, and immediately moved South. My holding pattern is this: I am unemployed, I am highly educated, I am living about an hour from civilization and spend my days baking and dealing with reverse culture shock while my husband goes to work. I also constantly search for employment within my field, taking this time as a luxury that I don’t have to take just any job, and appreciating the fact that many women are not so lucky. That said, after three months not being able to make any plans because I might be hired soon and I might be moving soon and I might be able to take all my worldly possessions out of storage soon (two storage locations, 1,000 miles apart), and after three years of additional higher education, during which all my friends have found employment, apartments, and social lives, I might actually be able to join them, I am close to cracking. Enter, blog.

During this absolutely unique time in my life, where I am time rich and money poor, and when I have all the time in the world but can’t buy a plane ticket to go anywhere because I don’t know if I might be relocating at any time, I thought I might be able to share my experience with other comrades in their own holding pattern. This life is full of contradictions. I love my husband and am happy we married but resentful that he works within his field and I’m still applying. I’m a feminist who has stumbled into being a housewife (which my mother oh-so-pleasantly pointed out in this year’s Christmas letter). I desperately want a job, but am seriously picky and afraid that once I’m hired I won’t live up to all the hype. Contradiction after contradiction.

If ages 20-25 are supposed to be the years we’re searching for identity, figuring out who we are, and defining who we want to be, what happens after 25 when everyone else seems to have answered these questions but I decided to be a grad student, and sort of fell behind on life? I like carving my own path and I like doing things different.

I hope this blog serves to be an avenue of outreach for me (did I mention I lived in the middle of nowhere, seriously, 45 minute drive to buy milk!), with a side of wanderlust and a bit about my love of cooking. I have no lofty goals and really not a lot of focus. But hey, isn’t that just like a holding pattern…