Here's the Deal

<.babble.>

You are at a crossroads. You need to decide for yourself, not your for parents, not for your academic mentors, not for your friends, what you want to do with the next part of your life.

With regard to your current situation, all you do is complain about it. You have no time, you feel you are not qualified, you'll never get a job, etc. Now, I don't know if that is what you say on the outside, and you feel something different on the inside, but from what I can tell, you are not fond of the path that is ahead of you.

That being said, you need to figure out if you need to change your life, or you need to let your life change you. Either accept, embrace, and celebrate your situation, and learn to adapt yourself to your current life of uncertainty, seemingly unending workloads, and academic status and prestige, or realize that this current story arc of Mike's life has come to an end, and re-invent yourself as something new and different. Switch fields completely, or just change your focus in the field you are in. Run a year round dig for college kids. Write books or novels. Screenplays! Invent and market the perfect widget to compliment every archaeologists needs! Shit man, sell your parents cabin in Big Bear, buy some property in Phoenix, then sell that, and do it all over again!

Whatever you decide, you need to make "it" your own, because life is absolutely too short to have shitty days followed by only by the dread of waking up and doing it all over again the next shitty day.

<./babble.>