"The waiting is the hardest part"....thank you Tom Petty

Arrg! So, I applied to the Creative Writing and Literature Ph.D. program at USC for the third time. This is my third year in a row. I am now three years older since my first application and my first rejection. I go from hopeful to depressed. The stats, I've been told is that they get 300 to 400 applicants a year and only accept 3-5 people. Who am I kidding! Anyways, I still do not know what I want to do when I grow up, and yet, I'm at the age where I'm supposed to be grown up. I only know that I would like to write and that I would like to teach at the University level. I have been fortunate in the past to teach at the Community College level, which I actually really enjoyed but, then, budget cuts were made for school funding and many a class disappeared and with them, many a teacher's job...mine included. This left me to therefore enter the big bad world of corporate office work for another two years, and then, now at a University, but in the Administrative section, which, I have to say is much better, but still, leaves me wanting.
This awful sense of waiting and anticipation has sucked my soul dry. I am forgetful, clumsy and I slur words because I am so much in thought about "what if?" that I appear slightly drunk...which is really sad and disheartening, because there is no tendency to giggle uncontrollably at people's sentences or to dance at anything remotely resembling music..trash can lids being thrown...I don't know....sigh...
I come home and find solace in my pets... and then anger because the puppy has taken a disgusting liking to eating out of the cat litter box. I know he knows it's wrong because when he hears the regular "Why!", he retreats under the bed.
I dislike the waiting, it has lead me to write only about my dog eating cat droppings. That also is what my conversations have been reduced to. "Oh, hi, yes, yes, I'm good...Still waiting to hear back about school...probably rejected..you know my dog won't stop eating cat poo..yes, yes, disgusting habit, but I know he knows it's wrong..aww...cute little guy though, disgusting but what a cutie, huh?"
I have also picked up the habit of checking my horoscopes daily. One said that I would hear wonderful news on March 4th. Yes! I thought, that must be it...nothing...this feeling of the unknown is really unsettling. I know that no matter what happens it'll be fine, I'll just be miserable for a week and then slightly ok, and then I'll just have acceptance with a blank stare on my face.
It's just that life is nothing as you expected when you were a kid or in high school. You visualize it being a certain way, or that you would be at a certain point by now, but you're just still climbing, still trying to figure things out and still deciding where to go. The exciting thing is that a year from now, I'm not sure what I'll be doing or where I'll be. My boyfriend graduates in a few months and will be searching for jobs...but in the meantime, this "let's look at the unknown" as being exciting, is actually rather tiring...and if I buy the wrong juice again because I forgot my glasses at home again...