Check

General application - DONE
Carnegie application - DONE
Princeton application - finish end
Zurch and Toronto - finish end
Copenhagen & UCSC - needs more work

I was soooo tired after the last deadline and soooo ridiculously burned out I couldn't function properly for a while. Then I spent a week working 12 hour days on my thesis which was productive but ended up in another major burn-out. This week was Thanksgiving. I ate, played football for the first time in my life and went for a hike - November in Arizona is one of the most beautiful times of the year! I am working on another batch of applications due on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1. Half of them are regular postdocs so I am just doing a generic one-size-fits-all application. The other half are several fellowships - some of the really nice (Carnegie and Princeton), some more obscure and not as mainstream (Toronto, Zurich). Work, me, work, please! My brain is threatening a strike, I sleep 12 hours, and I get easily distracted. I do realize this is all very important but it is so hard to stay motivated when at times the "nobody loves me, am I gonna get a job" voices in my head get a little too vocal. Work, me, work! Please!

past two weeks

All right, from the end to the beginning: today I spent the day in bed and reading and I went running and I am watching a second movie. It feels good! But I am starting to feel guilty for taking the day off. Gosh that is so terrible - I am having a guilt trip for taking Saturday off!
So the last few week. I went to Boston for a conference. I gave a talk at the conference. I shmoozed with a few people, but not nearly all I should have shmoozed with. Oh well, next time. I submitted 3 job applications on Halloween and spent the rest of the evening on the patio with the friends I was staying with drinking some amazing hot chocolate and waiting for trick or treaters. Then I gave a 45min talk and got to get a free lunch and see a friend who had just moved to CfA a month ago. Gosh, I really loved Boston! And the CfA wasn't that bad of a place. In fact I somehow mirraculosly managed to arrange for them to sponsor an application of mine this week - for the Hubble Fellowship, which means if I get it the CfA would be my first choice place to go to. Second went to UC, Santa Cruz and third to Columbia. Oh, well. I am so burned out from doing job applications, it's unbelievable! Never felt so burned out in my life! I hardly got anything done this week! Oh, I still have a pile of job adds over the next two months and I really have to sift through them and figure out which ones I really want to apply for, which ones I can get out of the way now and never think of them again and which 2-3 jobs I really want to will spend some more time on the applications for.
Spitzer proposals due this Friday too. Oh, well, it never ends.