I saw my Yahoo! News today, and apparently jobless claims are up again.  This does not bode well, in any way, for the 2010 elections.  Nor does it bode well for my current job search.  It seems like I've been awash in bad news and silence lately, and I don't know which I prefer.

First of all, bad news: my university is apparently in a hiring freeze, which means my fall-back plan of being a lecturer next year may in fact be an impossibility.  And when faculty members start telling you to look outside academia, well, that's just abysmal.

Secondly, silence: haven't heard from either university with whom I interviewed at the MLA.  In this case, no news is certainly not good news.

Nonetheless, I am trying to keep my chin up as much as possible.  You'd think that doing more job apps would help with that, but it hasn't and it doesn't.  In fact, it just makes the abyss more profound.

How to keep one's chin up in all this?

...still trying to figure that one out.