crisis of ugly consciousness

I'm auditing a German philosophy class focused on Wittgenstein and Heidegger: it is full of a) people--or rather one individual--who have no filter between brain and mouth and dominates the class and b) fabulous insights. Today, for example, we were discussing portions of Being and Time and spent a while on H's concept of the Entscheidung: that is, because our entire lives are spent honing in on death, the realization of our finitude forces us to make certain actively committed choices and to live out that commitment resolutely. (This, according to my professor has totalitarian overtones when the commitment is a social phenomenon, but for my purposes, that's a sidebar, hence the parenthetical.)

Although graduate school may not seem like a good use of time when considering death as impending, this does mark the thinking that led me to graduate school: I recognized that I couldn't dither forever and picked a career--one albeit that allowed to dither for almost a decade.

However, what the being on the job market insecurities have revealed to me are the mechanisms by which I made that choice. And it's not pretty.

Yes. I love my work.
But partially, I love my work because I'm good at it. And it feels good to be good at things.
How do I know I'm good? Cuz people tell me so. People I respect. Institutions give me further validation by picking me to receive their financial proof of confidence.
So, now that it's fully likely that I will not get a job for a goodly time, thus stripping from me the ego-boosting aspect of my initial choice, what am I left with? The work itself feels a little empty and difficult to motivate for when it is no longer guaranteed to transfer praise to me.

A fine thing to realize seven years into a degree: that seven years in therapy might have been a better investment.