It’s been one hell of a year.

Those of you who’ve been following along will know that in addition to actually finishing my Marie Curie postdoc at Lund—or, perhaps more accurately, coming to the end of the duration of my Marie Curie funding; the project itself looks set to have some sort of continuing existence beyond September of this year, the exact shape of which has yet to be come apparent—I wrote a lot of applications this year. I put my hat in the ring for half a dozen entry-level faculty positions here in Sweden, and then endured some very long waits before receiving a “no” in every case.

(The arrival of most of those “no” replies within a fairly small window of time, which also coincided with me doing a lot of work-related travel, very probably had a lot to do with my summer of burn-out.)

I have also applied for various sources and forms of funding, because I believe in the work I’m doing, believe it is worth continuing with, and believe that I’m well placed to do it. Because of the wonderful way that academia works—a situation which I’m given to believe is pretty common in the third sector also—windows of application and decision tend to cluster in the calendar.

Decisions on my last two outstanding applications were due today (FORMAS early-career annual open call) and next week (Vinnova MSCA employment).

It seems I didn’t make the cut on the FORMAS bid. This is not entirely surprising, because the project I described was more than a little mad: it was written during what was (in hindsight) a mildy hypomanic phase, for one thing, and the only way I could motivate myself to crank out yet another application after four attempts to contort myself into the predetermined boxes of faculty positions was to tell myself “OK, I’mma write what I actually really want to do, and why I think it really matters”. I wrote it without much in the way of support or feedback, and went through a moderately terrible set of bureaucratic hurdles to getting permission to submit it… and now I’ve waited six months to be told “no” once again.

And yeah, I’m gutted—firstly because the project was as magical as it was mad, and once you’ve written a thing like that you’d can’t help yourself but imagine what it might be like if you’re allowed to do it. But also, being entirely honest, because it would have set me up for the next four years of my life: it would have meant that, for the first time in two decades, or perhaps even my entire adult life, I wouldn’t have to feel like I was running alongside the train in hope of getting a seat.

Well, selah. Them’s the breaks.

It is easier for me to be philosophical about it than it might otherwise have been—because yesterday, a week ahead of deadline, the Vinnova bid came through in the positive.

This is a very different thing. For starters, it’s not a true academic grant, but rather a thing where one applies in collaboration with a Swedish organisation for sufficient money for said organisation to hire a recently-finished Marie Curie postdoc: it’s about “talent retention” (most MSCA postdocs do their two years and leave the country, apparently), and it’s about “knowledge transfer” (because academic research should be out doing stuff in the world rather than sitting in paywalled journal articles). It’s also considerably shorter in scope: Vinnova will stump up for six months 100%FTE equivalent, and the assumption (or maybe just the hope) is that the organisation decides to keep you on for longer.

However, six months at 100%FTE means that, in the context of me still running at 60%FTE at Malmö U until the end of June next year, I can now be fully employed all the way out to late October 2023 (assuming a January 2023 start).

That is not be everything I’d hoped for with the FORMAS project… but you know what? It’s pretty damned good anyway.

I’ll talk more about it when the details are settled, but the basics are that I’ll be doing futures work in the context of local government here in Skåne, with a very explicit remit to use the creative futuring techniques I’ve been working with over the last four or five years. Sure, it’s a move out of academia, but it’s also a move into the non-academic labour market in Sweden, which can be a tough nut to crack (particularly for someone whose Swedish is still pretty basic, and who judges LinkedIn to be a circle of Dante’s hell which went unpublished for fear it was too existentially bleak and punitive even for Medieval Christianity).

It’s a lucky break, and a great opportunity. It’s another chunk of road, just as I thought I was running out of road. It’s a little scary, and a fair way out of my comfort zone… but that’s perhaps the best thing about it.

The universe giveth, and the universe taketh away. It is merciful of the universe to have, in this particular instance, done those two things in that order, within the space of 24 hours.

(I don’t think I would have handled waiting a week for the Vinnova decision very well. Like I say, it’s been a tough year.)

You know what else? The Hellacopters, one of my all-time favourite bands, are playing a show in my home town tonight, and I have a ticket. Maybe synchronicity is nothing but blind happenstance, onto which we project whatever meaning feels comforting… but what the hell; I’ll take the comfort and run, if that’s all right with you.