Trying to be stoic

My leading job prospect for this year – the one that flew me in, at considerable expense, for a campus visit – has formally turned me down.  They let me down easy, but a no is a no.  Now there's nothing for me to do but press on with what few new job applications may come, and continue doing my research to make myself a more attractive candidate for next year's job cycle. 

I really felt like I gave my best shot at this gig; aside from niggling random worries, I can't think of anything I could have done better.  Maybe some things could have been better about me, but I did the best I could with what I had.  It was hard not to feel a little that the willingness to spend unusual coin on my airfare, as well as my warm interactions with the faculty and staff, were positive signs.  I never felt that I had the job in the bag, but I really hoped that I might, and just couldn't recognize it. 

My self-pity is tempered by the knowledge that a lot of academics, including a few who read and comment on this blog, have endured years of essentially luckless job hunting before they got anything.  I guess I have to resign myself to the reality that I'm only at the beginning of 'the lean years'.

Meanwhile, as I often do when I hit setbacks like this that fall somewhere short of tragic, I recall what Abraham Lincoln said when someone asked how he felt about losing the US senate election to Stephen Douglas: "I am like the boy who stubbed his toe: too big to cry, and too hurt to laugh."