All postdocs should watch A Chorus Line.
Someone asked me what being a postdoc is like. I answered, "It's like A Chorus Line (1975)."
So after you get your doctorate, you don't get a tenure track job right away. So you freelance with 2-3 year contracts until you get a permanent job. Well, what if you don't get a permanent job? Sorry, gotta get out! It's a weird aspect of academia. Non-academics give me the side eye, and ask, "That seems like a huge waste of talent ("Yes!" I answer)." Anxiety-inducing and soul-wrenching, a postdoc life is a difficult life. I'm lucky enough that I can work remotely with my postdoc wife. But for my best friend, it means she has to do long-distance with her partner. It's a lot of personal sacrifice, so honestly, pity a postdoc today.
How do you deal with it? I deal with it by crying to one of my favorite musicals of all time. A Chorus Line is a musical of an audition. Multiple dancers are vying to be part of the background dancers. The casting director, unable to pick, asks each of them to tell him a story of their life. As the audience, we learn most dancers desperately need the job to pay the bills. All of them made huge sacrifices to be paid pittance. Most of them won't make it big. Most of them are resigned to small roles for the rest of their life. Most of the dancers are in their 30's. That's retirement age as theater dancers.
Most of them have trained all their life for dancing. When one of the dancers suffer a career-ending injury, it's the question of: what then? Likewise, I am not sure if I will get a tenure track job. I would love to- though I understand it will bring its own sorrows. I realize that the decision is beyond me. Sometimes, when I'm feeling absolutely demoralized, I would put on "What I did for love" from A Chorus Line. It's this anthem of doing what you loved, even if you have to leave it behind.
The gift was ours to borrow
It's as if we always knew
And I won't forget what I did for love
Perhaps I have been poisoned with my own negativity, but I do love my field: theoretical ecology. I am thankful for it. And it has given me the gift of unquenchable thirst. I wake everyday with a reason to struggle. In a way, theater and academia seem to be different faces of the same coin. Cynically, they both exploit people in the name of "passion". But you cannot deny the passions of postdocs nor chorus line dancers.
Kiss today goodbye
And point me toward tomorrow
We did what we had to do
Won't forget, can't regret