To perfectly perform in reverse

Here's the thing about being back in Chicago:

On the one hand, the move was a triumph: Having conquered Boston and planted my flag atop Mount Library Book, I've returned in victory, fancy sheet of paper in hand, to my homeland, where GR and I will embark on a new, bright future surrounded by family and friends.

On the other hand, the move was a retreat: Having done what I set out to do in Boston, and having nowhere else in particular to go, I've returned inertly to my homeland, sliding back like a riptide to where I was (or, more precisely, a few blocks south and west) before I left.

Emotionally speaking, I've been floating between these two narratives for the past few months. It's caused some discomfort.

Achieving major life goals is a notoriously, if paradoxically, complicated thing. There's even a Psych-101-caliber term, called the "arrival fallacy," used to explain the let-down feeling people experience after accomplishing a long-pursued objective. Lots of us fallaciously expect that attaining a particular goal (say, getting a certain promotion or award, or having your snail win the World Snail Racing Championship, or earning a PhD), will automatically bestow happiness and satisfaction, and we can be afflicted with anything from generalized restlessness to full-blown depression when, having achieved our dreams, the existential rewards fail to rain down from the heavens.

My enduring problem is that I continue to believe (against all life experience to the contrary) that knowing about a phenomenon will somehow inoculate me against experiencing it. Readers of this blog know all too well at this point that I've made it my life's mission to be irritatingly prepared for what life would be like after grad school, painstakingly calculating probable outcomes and setting my expectations accordingly. I highly doubt I could've been more ready, mentally or emotionally, for this transition. Everything is going according to plan, and I'm exactly where I want to be, and I'm still managing to feel a little adrift and bummed, for now.

On the bright side, when I'm feeling a little adrift and bummed, I can now go to Portillo's.