Never before in my three-year-history as a columnist has my life been so uncertain. Never before has my fate rested so dramatically in the hands of people I may never meet. I have little choice but to stay put, to embrace a state of stasis, to wait, anticipate, and be patient at that too. Never before have I previously encountered such an intensity of wanting something while knowing it is not just right for me, but is the logical next step in my "career". I told Mona last week that if the funding for my PhD didn't come through, for whatever reason, I would feel shattered. If, after everything I've accomplished in my career as a self-made art critic, I am still not considered worthy of being granted a scholarship in order to intellectually contribute to existing scholarship on South Asian art history, I would indeed feel defeated. She rightly told me that I would be shattered for a while, but soon after, I would find the grace to move on.

The feeling of uncertainty has been accentuated by my growing disenchantment with my current freelance lifestyle, where I write between three to five stories a week, for publication in various magazines, papers, and journals, and have yet to continually suffer the ignominy of not being taken seriously by the industries in which I operate. It's usually at the level of not being paid enough, or on time, or not being considered for anything beyond my journalistic writing. This, alongside being frequently broke, always in new and marvellous ways, and having to rely repeatedly on the generosity of my friends, adds to the feeling of future precariousness. At 33, things should really have looked up for me, instead, each morning I wake up and stare at the crisis that is my bank account balance and I try to configure new ways of stretching my resources.